


Of Liars’ Gifts, and Gifted Liars

by Like_a_Hurricane



Series: Tricks of the Trade [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: BAMF!Loki, M/M, Tony Stark likes to mess with people too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-26
Updated: 2012-05-26
Packaged: 2017-11-06 01:26:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/413198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Like_a_Hurricane/pseuds/Like_a_Hurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of exchanges between a pair of talented showmen: mutual torment of a verbose nature, unexpected gifts, and the peculiar honesty of a pair of craftsmen proud of their own work, and willing to admit admiration of another’s. Also featuring: Loki talking his way out of incarceration, Tony Stark making reckless business decisions on a whim, and much much more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Liars’ Gifts, and Gifted Liars

It had taken more than two thirds of his liquor reserves to get the god of thunder even a little drunk, but Thor had seemed very much in need of it. At least, that was Tony’s primary excuse. The fact he’d thus been the closest set of ears for Thor to ramble into about his brother had been a real bonus. Tony had expected it, really, and it would’ve been quite a lie if he were to suggest that his liquor donations hadn’t been motivated by that very thing. He was curious. He was always curious about people with real families: the sort that break each other, that is. Sometimes he’d even find some that made his own look vaguely functional.

So Thor had told him about his brother’s betrayal, starting with his coronation. From the hesitation in his voice, it was clear Thor still found it hard to believe that Loki had brought frost giants into Asgard. He still recalled so vividly his brother’s words: _I think you’re right: about Laufey, about everything._ It pained him, in retrospect, to have been so blind. “I desired war. I desired glory. I was a fool not to see how carefully my father had maintained peace after his wars with the frost giants. He wanted to give them time to rebuild, to better themselves, as you humans have done in our absence over the centuries. You are equal to us, or becoming so, by your own power and determination. No Aesir has the right to look down on any man in Midgard, for the world you have all made for yourselves is quite beyond our comprehension. Humanity is a force to be reckoned with, and have proven as much, fighting my brother as you have.” He shook his head. “I long ago accepted that I am a student of Earth, not a lord over any of it. It pains me now that my brother remains so stubbornly blind, when he was the one who taught me that lesson, in his way.”

Then, with more subtle plying, and still more liquor, the rest of the story did out. Thor’s banishment, Loki’s seemingly accidental rise to the throne, and the lies he told both the king of the frost giants, and to his own exiled brother. The destroyer, Thor’s return to Asgard, and finally the destruction of the bïfrost. It was the latter which required the most alcohol, but the details garnered from the viking god’s loosened tongue resonated with still-suspicious parts of Tony Stark’s brain as he tried to make a map of Loki’s motives and decision-making. _Know thy enemy._

 _To prove that I am a worthy son!_ That resonated more than the billionaire was comfortable with; he’d felt some desperate urge along those lines, a long, long time ago. _I never wanted the throne! I only wanted to be your equal_ , was also particularly revealing, and just distant enough from Tony’s own personal experiences that he could hold it up to the light and stare into the facets of it without too much discomfort.

Thor passed out on his couch that night.

Tony was left thinking about the nearby S.H.I.E.L.D. base, where Loki sat in a cell, wearing metal around his wrists and across his mouth to lock down all of the power he carried with him, and prevent him from pulling any more to himself. Tony was left thinking about lies and how optimistic their little super-villain had sounded, talking to those people in Germany. It had been so cartoonish, so flashy: sleight of hand and misdirection.

He’d started to be unnerved by Loki, really, the first time he’d felt the trickster’s thoughts mirror his own: namely, when he realized Loki’s intention to commandeer Stark tower for the sake of compounding insult, injury, and pure showmanship.

Tony Stark was more than a little familiar with showmanship, and considered himself to be an excellent liar. His prowess at poker was a thing of legend in some circles, and there are several places in Vegas that still wouldn’t let him near the tables. Tony also knew genius when he saw it. Thor was a pretty sharp tack for a blunt-weapon weirder but not exactly genius; however, Thor’s little brother clearly had a fair streak of it, buried under the apparent cold lunacy.

So within a few hours, sans sleep and indifferent to the grey early dawn light at his back, Tony wandered into S.H.I.E.L.D. and sauntered in the general direction of the high-security holding cells like he owned the place. Getting past security was easy enough. He’d been hacking their systems for weeks now, and so long as he looked straight-faced and confident enough, no one questioned a man with all the right keys and all the right codes. Fury would likely notice within about fifteen minutes, though, so Tony didn’t exactly dawdle.

He was unpleasantly surprised to find Nick Fury already waiting for him at the door to Loki’s cell, looking unimpressed and mildly annoyed. “Mr. Stark, don’t make me regret letting you in this base without a strip search to remove any traces of bugging technology from your person.”

Tony considered this. “Would I get my suit back?”

“I’d make sure you were made to wear scrubs, Mr. Stark. Pink ones.”

The billionaire frowned at that despite himself. “Duly noted.”

Fury stared at him hard, eye narrowed and appraising. “You don’t look like you’re affected by any of our Asgardian friend’s little tricks this morning, so I’m not at all certain what you think you’re doing here. And where is our other demigod? We’ve almost finished our farewell assessments and scans of the tesseract, and I gather he’s eager to use it to take his brother home.”

“Thor might happen to be passed out and still a bit drunk on my couch at home. We had a good long chat.” He made a face, and reluctantly sobered his demeanor a little. “You know me, Nick. I know what read you think you've got on Loki, but you want to know more for all the same reasons I do, here. We both know a liar when we see one, and right now I’d personally like to run a few things by your captive one here, now that I’ve got a bit more background. I’ve got questions, let’s say.”

“He’s not exactly chatty, Stark.”

“I just need to watch his face while I do the talking. I promise, that'll tell me enough, even if that muzzle holds out.”

Fury considered. His scowl deepened, then let up reluctantly, as he exhaled and let some apparent tension leave his shoulders: just enough to make the inventor grin at what he perceived to be a capitulation. “You have thirty minutes, on the grounds that you don’t disable our eyes and ears in that cell.”

Tony grimaced again. “Fine. Fine.” He waved a hand.

Fury pressed in an unfamiliar code, and scanned his good eye. The door opened, and Tony stepped through into the well-lit, heavily reinforced cell. It felt like stepping into a bank vault that happened to have a few pieces of furniture and a super-villain in it, instead of gold and other currencies. The door hissed shut behind him.

Loki was sprawled out on the heavy steel bench bolted to the far wall, sitting up with his back to the corner of the room. He wasn’t the sort of creature who looked any less dangerous just because he happened to be in a corner, gagged and handcuffed. Loki arched an eyebrow: the only indication he found Tony Stark’s presence at all surprising.

“You’re looking thrilled to see me,” Tony greeted. “And I don’t blame you.” He found a chair that wasn’t bolted down and pulled it up, seating himself right in front of the god of mischief. “You know, it takes an awful lot to get your brother drunk.”

Loki’s eyes narrowed, looking green as poison.

“It takes even more to get him drunk enough to talk about what happened with _you_ , before all of this business with your little cosmic cube or whatever.” He leaned back in the chair, folding his arms over his chest as he held the god’s stare. “It’s funny, he mentioned something about you not wanting a throne. That seems a bit strange, given my personal experiences with you.”

A twitch, somewhere behind that metal muzzle that covered the lower half of Loki’s face, let the man of iron know he’d struck a nerve, but the seething anger seemed to recede from the liar’s expression, if only a little. Loki tilted his chin up, just slightly, silently encouraging him to go on.

Tony felt a chill roll down his spine, with a prickle of excitement, too: the familiar sensation of his brain around a new and particularly fascinating puzzle. “I was right, wasn’t I? There was no way you could come out on top, here on Earth. You’d never be king here, and you knew it. That wasn’t your game at all.”

There it was: lines around Loki’s eyes went from a portrait of suspicion, to fiercely mirthful. He made no other move: not a nod, not a twitch.

“At best, you might have let their army destroy a great deal of our cities, and our governments, and then turn against them. If you’d managed to take out the Avengers, and S.H.I.E.L.D., there would hardly be anyone left to identify you as the one who started all this mess. You’d be the hero, and some might even worship you for it. That’s a real long shot, though, and pretty unnecessarily complicated even by super-villain standards.”

Loki huffed what sounded suspiciously like a laugh at that.

Tony smirked coldly. “I thought so. You don’t even really want adulation anymore, do you? You just want to piss people off.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes narrowed. “That’s not all, though. You’re spiteful, I can tell, but not enough to lure an army to Earth just for shits and giggles. They offered you a deal, and you were playing them as much as you were us. I do have to wonder what they really had to offer you, if this little planet wasn’t it––or more likely, I wonder what were you tricking all of us into, if you didn’t really intend to win.”

The god of mischief was looking quite amused now. He let his long legs fall off the bench, turning his body to face Tony head on. The metal about his wrists looked far too heavy, for how gracefully he settled his arms over his legs, mirroring Tony’s stance: leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs. He pressed his palms together, as though in prayer, then opened them like the pages of a book. Clear, black script appeared across his palms, as though scratched in from a pen beneath the skin: _Very good, Man of Iron_.

Watching it, Tony felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. “I thought that magic muzzle and the chains suppressed your magic.”

The trickster closed his hands, then re-opened them, clearing the canvas, only for fresh words to scratch their way across. _I cannot draw on powers outside of my body, nor can any of my power escape me. It is all trapped, here under my skin. You may know the feeling._

When the inventor arched an eyebrow at that, Loki glanced pointedly at a certain Little Circle of Light. “I see. Nice loophole." When the god's stare met his own again, Tony's mouth went dry for reasons he couldn't explain, but he mentally shook it off and when next he spoke, it was with a undaunted smile curling around his words: "You can answer my questions, then.”

Again, Loki’s hands closed, and reopened. _Whyever would I?_ He raised an eyebrow in and expression of droll incredulity.

Tony considered. “I can’t exactly offer you freedom. Think of something you want from me, and I’ll see if I consider it viable.”

The god considered, looking intently curious now. After a long few moments, he nodded magnanimously and offered, _Fair trade: my stories for yours. Begin with that device in your chest: what is it, and what is its purpose?_

“It’s an arc reactor that powers an electromagnet, which is keeping bits of bomb shrapnel from sinking into my heart and killing me,” Tony said simply. “I made it myself.”

_The shrapnel, too?_

Tony’s expression darkened. “You’re good.” He shook his head. “I might tell you more about that, if you tell me how you hooked up with that alien army.”

A smirk: all liar’s mockery, visible even with that metal muzzle in the way. _Well, that was just a bit of fun, really._

The avenger shook his head. “What more than that?”

Loki’s expression smoothed into a perfectly reserved mask. _I fell from the remains of the rainbow bridge, into a wormhole created by the abrupt and catastrophic destruction of the power-overloaded bïfrost._ He closed his hands once Tony nodded to imply he’d finished reading. _I fell through several of the nine realms, but also places between them. There are horrors there._ He watched Tony’s face closely. _As you may recall._

As expected, the man of iron abruptly recalled the cold vastness on the other side of the portal Loki had torn open over Stark tower. The lines of every shape in that place had seemed wrong, from an engineering standpoint: non-euclidean geometry. Land masses had hung in the air, and there was over everything a sense of emptiness; there was only the never-ending dark, and this army of monsters floating through it like specters, or guardians of a galaxy-sized graveyard. He had not stared into it for long, and the suffocating clarity of it had felt forced, and searing, like the place was full of silent screaming that wanted him to hear it, and know it. Then he’d fallen away from it.

He’d fallen, but someone had been there to catch him. He had the feeling Loki hadn’t been even half so lucky as that.

“You landed hard, didn’t you?” Tony asked, voice low. “Maybe left a crater deeper than the one our Hulk made for you.” He lifted a hand, then, as though plucking a new tangent from the air. “While on that subject: I thought that was a bit odd, y’know. You pulling yourself from that crater, and then just sitting down right in front of us.” He tisked loudly. “You can fucking teleport. You can phase through solid matter like one of your illusions. I’ve seen the footage.” He leaned forward again, closer into Loki’s space. “So what are you _doing_ here?”

Loki folded his hands shut, his eyes downcast almost demurely. When he reopened them, the words appeared quicker, as though scribbled hastily: _You saw the place I landed in, if only briefly. As a mortal, I’m honestly surprised that your sanity seems so_ relatively _intact._ Hands closed, then opened again. _I am a god, Mr. Stark. I am one of the most powerful creatures ever raised in Asgard. I once very nearly destroyed an entire planet, and all of its inhabitants._ His palms met again, and just before they reopened, the god's eyes abruptly flicked up to meet Tony’s again: dark green and bright as polished metal. _There is a creature from that empty place, who has unmade galaxies, and I want nothing to do with him._

Tony felt his blood run cold. The idea that Loki, who had nearly torn them apart and the world with them, had been running from someone still _worse_ , or something, made the Avenger feel suddenly very, very small.

The sorcerer's hands closed. And reopened. _I did hope you all would manage to create a sufficient diversion. It would have otherwise been only a matter of time before he traced the tesseract to its source._ Closed. Reopened. _The tesseract is one of my father’s most powerful creations, you see._

Tony felt his throat tighten. “You thought you’d lead him to our doorstep, instead of your dad’s.” His lips curled back to show his teeth an an expression rather unlike a smile. “How _noble_.”

Again, the god looked amused. _Come now, Man of Iron. Look at what you’ve all accomplished in such a short period of time._ Hands closed. And opened. _You’ve pulled together forces capable of tearing apart an army advanced far beyond your own world’s technology, and taken down a god._ Closed. Open. _You are underestimated by the rest of the nine realms, you know. Just as I have always been. Think what you could do with just a little more time._

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “Underestimated as you still _are_ , I think.”

The smirk once more reached Loki’s eyes, but this time when his hands closed, he kept them palm-to-palm. He raised his eyebrows, shooting the engineer an expectant look. It was Tony’s turn to tell a tale.

Ironman shook his head, but his lips started moving almost without his permission. “My parents died in a plane crash. Long time ago. I was still just a kid, and I inherited my dad’s arms manufacturing empire.” Tony wished he’d brought a drink with him for this. “I designed weapons, and I was very good at it. They made a lotta of money, and the press nicknamed me the Merchant of Death.” He leaned back in his chair again, arms folded. “My godfather, my father’s closest friend, who finished raising me when my parents died, decided a few years ago that he wanted to have all the rest: the whole of the empire and everything he thought I stood in the way of. So he shipped me off to the desert to show off my new missiles, and paid to have some terrorists get rid of my convoy, using my own weapons to do it. One of my own bombs almost, but not quite, killed me. The Ten Rings leader recognized me, though, and realized he hadn’t been paid _half_ enough to kill the likes of me. Not with how useful I could be.”

Loki remained still, his smirk politely absent, as he listened.

“So they put me in a cave, and told me to build for them. They had another scientist with them, a doctor. He put an electromagnet over my heart and strapped it to a car battery. That was enough to suspend the tiny, potentially lethal bits of metal shrapnel in place above my heart, instead of letting them drift into it and kill me. ” He tapped the arc reactor. “Obviously, I came up with something a bit tidier not long after. And they thought I was building bombs for them, so no one said a word about it.”

Slowly, Loki’s hands opened. _You made a suit of armor instead, I gather?_

Tony nodded. “They killed my friend before it quite got up and operational; he helped,” he said, letting the ambiguity of what that help entailed save him from saying things that would put more of a rasp into his voice than just talking about Yinsen already had; and yet, it was easy to keep composed, somehow, holding Loki’s stare. Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe it was just easier to be stubborn when facing down someone as arrogant as a god. Maybe it was that his story wasn’t really heroic. All Tony really remembered was that he had made himself into a weapon, and thrashed his way out as much out of spite as any good intentions. He knew he wasn’t that much of a hero, and he didn’t really believe in redemption: just improvement.

The trickster god's dimples twitched in the ghost of a wry smile, but it didn't reach his eyes, which still stared coldly through Tony's eyes and possibly at something only he could see etched onto the inside of Tony's skull. That was how it felt to the inventor, in any case. What could the human do, but ignore it with every bit of flippant mortal defiance he possessed, and keep telling his tale in spite of it?

“I came home from the desert and announced to the world that I would stop making weapons, and that my company would no longer manufacture or sell anything designed to kill. I set out to tear down my own weapons empire, and I expected people to like me for it.” Tony took a deep breath. “I didn’t expect my close friend Obadiah to paralyze me, and rip the arc reactor out of my chest. I especially didn’t expect him to tell me he’d paid for my death in the desert, and then just walk out, leaving me there to die.” He stared at Loki, unflinching. “He’s dead now, if you were wondering. There was ice involved: you might’ve liked it.”

Loki sat up a bit straighter, pulling his feet together. His palms drew apart, as though opening an invisible book and resting it on his knees. _Is this meant to appeal to my humanity, Tony Stark?_

Tony laughed, quick and dark. “No. Not at all. Quite the opposite.”

Something flickered in the god’s stare, something dangerous that struck a bit too close to home, to judge by the way his expression reflexively smoothed into something unreadable and calm, but this time the faint cracks around the edges weren’t anger or pain; they were all intrigue. He leaned back a little, eyes narrowed. Underneath his previous question, unfolded a single word: _Interesting._

The mortal inventor smiled thinly. “I tend to be. Now it’s your turn; what’s with this destruction of a planet plan you had before you fell?”

Loki rubbed his palms together, then opened them again. _Did Thor mention that I am not his brother, by blood?_

After a long moment, Tony shook his head. “Sort of. He mentioned you were adopted, but that was about it.”

_I am not. Odin brought me home with him, from the battlefields of Jotunheim, along with other spoils of war._

“Jotun... the ones whose planet you tried to explode?”

Loki nodded. _I was unaware of my own nature, until the day of Thor’s banishment. Aesir flesh is seared black by the cold of a Jotun’s grip in battle. Mine did not burn, much to my surprise._ A bitter flicker of amusement crossed his features. _Then we returned to Asgard, and  I watched my dear brother banished for starting us a new war._

“So you thought you would finish it? End the war?”

The god of mischief nodded. _And make further wars with them impossible in future._

“Didn’t it occur to you that maybe there was a reason your dad hadn’t just destroyed their whole planet in the first place, since the potential had been there in the bïfrost all along?” Tony mused.

The look of black, scorching rage which Loki shot him was quite eloquent.

“S’alright.” He shrugged. “I thought that selling weapons would keep them in the hands of people who could be trusted to use them to promote peace,” Tony said flatly. “I thought that my company was full of good enough people that there was surely no way for my weapons to be sold to warlords and terrorists.” He shrugged. “We all fuck up at some point. I only killed a million or so people with my stupidity over the years. You?”

Loki’s anger remained uncooled, but something in his shoulders relaxed, and Tony detected a hint of bemused curiosity behind the mask.

“There’s another thing I noticed about you. You’re an excellent performer. I’m a damn good liar and I could still learn a thing or two from you.

 _God of Lies and Mischief_ , Loki flashed from his palms, his expression droll again.

“Congratulations on your villain act, by the way. You read up on our history at some point, didn’t you? All those people kneeling in Germany and there you really sounded like you wanted to be king. You fooled us, you fooled the Chitauri, and you may even fool the people back home depending on how much they hear about it.”

Loki rolled his eyes. Hands closed and reopened. _No one in Asgard will be surprised. I am my brother’s shadow, in their eyes, and they read jealousy into my every action._

“Gee, I wonder why,” Tony countered dryly. He wondered where Fury was. It’d been more than half an hour, hadn’t it?

The god glared at him again.

“You spent centuries considered somehow lesser than a heavily muscled guy who seems to’ve been hit very hard about the head a lot,” Tony said flatly. “That’d drive me up the wall. Thor is tolerable company these days mostly because he’s suitably sober, angry, and depressed. Him drunk though, and all the hour of drinking songs I was in deafening proximity to? I can see why you went the villain route.”

That seemed to surprise a genuine and unexpected chuckle from the god, who then winced as most of it was held back by whatever was on the inner side of that metal mask.

Tony remembered something about a myth where Loki’s lips had been sown shut, and suddenly felt a bit uncomfortable. “I’ve told you my story, Loki,” he said quietly, expectantly. “Let’s get back to you and this guy who breaks galaxies.”

Loki nodded, and his hands again closed, then reopened. _I fell. I landed in the place you witnessed, however briefly. I was half-dead, of course._ Closed. Open. Like the world’s slowest applause. _I was in no position to resist capture. I was in no position to make any demands or wagers._ Another beat. _So of course, I proceeded making wagers, resisting capture, and generally being problematic for them to keep hold of._

Tony snorted, amused.

Loki  nodded, as though approving of his mild scorn. _I then met their leader. He wished to know where I was from, and where my powers were from._ Closed. Open. _He does not desire power. He has more than enough. He desires only death. He is_ in love _with death._

Again, Tony felt a chill. “You’re afraid of him.”

The god rolled his eyes. _Of course I am. I’m not half the fool my brother is. Fear keeps us alive, does it not, Tony Stark?_ Closed. Open. _We liars and showmen know fear intimately. Why else would men like us constantly require masks, tricks, and vast collections of secrets?_ Closed. Open. Loki’s eyes looked sharp and bright with something almost like a real smile: _Other than the sheer fun of it, of course._

The avenger felt his heartbeat quicken, a slight thrill rolling down his spine. _Oh, he’s good_ , he thought. “You think your trip home will be ‘fun’ then?”

The god looked away, expression dark again. _Your parties come with hangovers. Mine comes with incarceration and trial._ Closed. Open. _I know what I’m up against, in Asgard._

“Some of my parties did actually lead to that, but with rather less murder, and never with a potential death sentence.” Tony hummed thoughtfully. “Why did this death-lover give you to the Chitauri?”

 _He wanted to test their usefulness, and their loyalty, as well as mine. They passed their test, in their way._ He hesitated, then revealed: _It remains to be seen whether he has seen through my tricks or no._ Closed. Open. _He is not a creature easily lied to, and I had to resort to a certain loss of sanity to guard my own secrets and plans from him in my own mind._

Tony nodded. “It must’ve been useful, though, working with people who had no knowledge of your prior reputation.”

The god shrugged, rather than looking as smug as might have been expected, still looking far too sober. _It was not enough. I have lost a great deal of what I was. Regaining it may prove trying, presuming I’m not executed soon._

The engineer had no idea how to respond to that. “You don’t expect me to believe you weren’t really in control.”

 _No. I was._ Loki’s expression went flat and dead. _I did all of this quite voluntarily._

“Even the laughing after stabbing people.”

The god snorted. _Never mistake me for truly human, sane, or sympathetic._

For a moment, Tony thought about what it might take to make any man so dead and vacant as Loki looked right then. It made him think of the cold, spite-fueled rage that had chilled him to the bone when Yinsen’s heart stopped, and it made him think of that nuclear blast, that armada of ships and the shrill sounds of the Chitauri, all of which made him want a drink even more. “You have escape plans, I suppose.”

_One or two dozen possibilities have already come to mind._

Tony nodded. “If you come back here, we’ll be waiting for you. And we’ll be far better prepared.”

_So you may think, but I know you all a bit better, too._

“Accurate.” The billionaire still had that bit of thrill under his skin, despite the sobering chill that had settled over the conversation. That thrill felt promising. It was the sort of tingling, restless spark that he got before finding an unexpected answer, or came up with a stunning new design for something. It also tended to precede questionable-yet-brilliant decisions about to be made. “If he comes for us, he’ll come for Asgard. If he’s really a connoisseur of death, surely killing a bunch of immortals would give him a bit of a thrill, and we have a strong connection to you via Yggdrasil, according to some of Dr. Foster’s more insteresting theories.”

 _Did you think I was going home just to see my mother again or something?_ The god gave an amused hum. _Keep in mind, too, that my actions have provided a boon to both our realms. We both now have time, at least, to ready ourselves, and our adoptive kin if they might let us._

“We have less time, and more to lose here on Earth,” Tony bit out.

 _And you have a Hulk._ Loki wore a mock-innocent expression.

“Well... you have to face Odin,” the avenger shot back, a bit petulantly.

A flicker of unease crossed the god’s face: more deeply disturbed than when the thunder and lightning had come to tear him out of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s hands. He raised one hand in an offensive gesture that made it clear he’d learned a few things, culturally, while on Earth.

Tony laughed, bright and sincere, at the sight of it. When he sobered, it was to the sobering sound of Fury’s voice on the intercom. “Time’s almost up, Stark.”

Loki glanced up at the intercom with an unimpressed expression.

“That took them longer than I expected.”

The god looked a little amused by that.

“Then again, I didn’t expect you to be quite so forthcoming, either.”

Loki met his gaze again, and again displayed his palms. _You intrigue and surprise me more consistently than any other mortal I have met, and I am very bored, here in this little cage._

“I’m a suitable distraction, you’re saying.”

 _I had wondered, seeing that tower of yours, and your armor, how much of it was lies._ Open. Closed. _I had wondered if any of you might see through mine._ Loki tilted his chin up a little. _Now I almost wish we had met under rather different circumstances, Tony Stark._

Tony swallowed thickly, thinking disturbing things like, _I love Pepper I love Pepper I love Pepper_ , and _that falls somewhere around the middle of the creepy scale between not-quite-stalker and high-functioning sociopath doesn’t it?_ and especially, _I think we’ve just added a super-villain Norse deity to the list of things that should not be a turn-on, but that turn Tony Stark on anyway_. It was unfair, really, for their super-villain to be quite so captivating and challenging, with eyes and cheekbones like that. It shouldn’t be allowed, and Tony wished he could unsee most of it––evil wasn’t supposed to be appealing like that. “Are you regretting that you defenestrated me, then?”

An amused half-laugh, little more than a hiss of breath behind the mask. The god’s palms read: _Not in the least._

Tony stood, hearing faint sounds from outside the vault: the hiss of bolts slowly shifting as the first set of locks began to move. “You’re insane, you know.”

The god nodded. _Obviously._

Against his own better judgement, Tony bent at the waist and leaned in to whisper in Loki’s ear, “I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you without my armor; however...” Concealed behind an apparently flippant tap of his fingers at the top of Loki's chest-plate, he tucked something under the god’s tunic-collar, whereon it clung: a little piece of Stark Industries AI, good for one call. The inventor kept them on hand at all times in case he ever needed to give someone a means of setting off a distress call, just to himself and/or JARVIS. If his thumb happened to brush along Loki’s collarbone, it was sheer coincidence. “Maybe you can let me know when you’re back in town.” He felt the god’s head turn toward his, felt a freezing breath exhaled near his neck and shivered.

Loki was watching him very intently as Tony pulled away, his hand dropping from Loki’s shoulder as the god’s blank palms self-marred again to ask: _Whatever for?_

“Because those would be different circumstances, maybe,” Tony said. _If you think you can handle it_ was implied by his smirk.

The god’s eyebrows raised, seemingly disconcerted to have his flirtation half-returned and half-subverted in one gesture. _I hardly plan to become an Avenger, and I have no need of redemption._

“I gathered that.” The door was sliding open over his shoulder now. “I’m not just an Avenger, though, as you might’ve noticed. Redemption isn’t my thing.” _I’m Tony Goddamned Stark, and apparently, I’m out of my mind._ “Besides: I still owe you a drink.” He smiled fiercely, then turned on his heel and left, feeling the god if mischief’s eyes on him even after the door was shut once more.

Fury stared him down, looking thoroughly displeased, to a degree that Tony actually considered out of proportion. Natasha, at his side, looked merely passive and vigilant, though perhaps just a little more amused.

Then it occurred to him: “You couldn’t see the words on his hands, could you?”

Slowly, Fury shook his head. “No. We couldn’t.”

Tony whistled through his teeth. “He’s a sneaky little bastard, isn’t he?” Two rather armed men stepped up behind him. Natasha took a step closer, too.

“Time to debrief, Mr. Stark,” the prettiest assassin said simply.

Tony sighed. “Fine. Fine. I can’t promise I remember it all word for word, though,” he said, sing-song and sarcastic.

 

~~

 

He hadn’t expected them to sit him down in front of the tape, and write in Loki’s replies in the blank sections of a transcript, which handily had Tony’s own words filled in for extra memory-jogging. Out of spite, he made his 'memory' version considerably more bland, and as vague as possible. It helped that their microphones hadn’t picked up what he’d whispered in Loki’s ear, just as the inventor had known they wouldn't.

That was the first bit that Fury questioned him on. He’d left it blank on his version of the transcript.

“Mr. Stark, I’m beginning to think you might have said something regrettable to him.”

“I threatened his life if he ever came near my tower again. I figured that went without saying. Didn’t want it in writing on the off-chance Thor might wind up seeing it,” Tony lied easily. “What did you _think_ I told him?”

Fury appeared nonplussed. “What about this character he alluded to, who hooked him up with that army?”

“It makes sense. The place on the other side of that portal...” Tony shuddered despite himself. “I keep thinking H.P. Lovecraft must’ve seen it at some point. It felt dead. I felt dead.” Shaking his head to clear it, he added, “If he’s afraid of reprisal from someone over there, it would explain why he let us catch him so easy, after he got out of the hole in my floor. I’d want to run off home, too, given the chance, if the guys in charge of that army had me on their shit list.”

“You think they’d really be lured here?”

Tony frowned. “That depends on whether you believe someone in love with death would be interested in us because we killed off so much of their army. It doesn’t sound as realistic as ‘gee, whoever was in charge of the rest of that civilization is likely pissed off at Loki.’ Then again, I fly around in an armored robotic suit, Loki and Thor are Norse gods, Natasha kills men with her ankles, and currently I’m in a steady-ish relationship with Pepper: none of that would normally sound realistic, if we hadn’t been living through it.”

Fury gave him that “you talk too much” look again. “That’ll be all, Mr. Stark.”

 

~~

 

Loki’s return to Asgard was not an minor, calm or sedate affair. Repairs to the bïfrost had gone but slowly, due primarily to lack of resources. News of instability and new wars threatening throughout a number of other realms had made the populace more than a little nervous, and more than a little inclined to hate on principal the person who had destroyed their rainbow bridge.

The metal mask stayed on, stilling his tongue, until he knelt before the All-Father. Loki cursed himself for a sentimental fool, when it proved so difficult to raise his head and look Odin in the eye. Once he did, his heart spasmed in his chest, as he knew it would. Not all the ice in Jotunheim, or the wastes between realms, could have kept him entirely cool-headed now that he was weak, still bruised, and dragged back home to be met with this; worse than pity, worse than anger by far, and worse even than hatred: Odin looked at his adopted son with hurt, love, and disappointment. A small flicker of pity did briefly cross his expression, once he vanished Loki's mask with a gesture, and the Allfather could see the traces of Loki's struggle against that restraint, but it didn't last, and evaporated so fast as to make his sons question whether they had even seen it.

After a long moment of staring, ignoring the drops of blood clinging to the skin around his lips––they must have looked like stitches, and wouldn’t the mortals be proud of themselves––Loki’s expression began to close again, as he regained his composure bit by bit, shard by shard. He had seen to much, stooped too low to survive it, and stared into the abyss for too long, to let Asgard curse him for being too proud now, but he would hardly be broken or bowed too low, either. “All-Father,” he said simply, his look calm and a little sad, “you look weary.” He captured the lilt perfectly: partly his own childhood innocence, and partly Laufey’s warning.

Odin’s expression pinched, looking pained. “Loki.” His fingers tightened around the metal mask. “Do not make me regret giving you this opportunity to speak.”

Loki nodded in understanding, seeming by all appearances much more humble, and more sane, than he’d looked since the day of his brother’s almost-coronation. He had shed a few of those masks, only for his kin now that he faced them, though he kept one or two on hand to minimize the madness he knew he’d collected since then. The resentment he felt, that his kin would first speak to him of all this in the middle of a vast hall, with the general populace watching like spectators behind him, showed only in the way he glanced quickly to either side, clearly looking at their audience from the corners of his eyes without moving his head. “What would you have me say, then, All-Father?” he asked, polite as you please.

Odin took a deep breath, and then began to speak, his voice a bit colder, a bit more removed than mere ire would account for: just as it had been when he sentenced Thor: “Your actions, Loki, have endangered these realms and others, and betrayed your kin.”

“Which kin, precisely?” Loki whispered, hardly moving his lips: the sound did not carry far, but it did carry far enough.

The All-Father’s voice hitched, just for a moment, before he continued, “You brought Jotuns into our home, and to the weapon’s vault, and incited both the Jotuns, and your brother, into starting a war.”

Loki cleared his throat, and spoke a little louder, “If I may, All-Father?”

Odin glared down at him, all full of anger now.

That put the god of mischief a bit more at his ease. Anger was easy to cope with, and could deal him but shallow wounds. Much better than that look he’d gotten at the first. “I hardly needed to incite Thor. Had his coronation gone forward as planned, I have little doubt that he would have brought about war with Jotunheim within hours of his first attempt to meet diplomatically with King Laufey.” He took a deep breath, ignoring the susurrus of muttering and occasional arguments in the crowd around them. He looked down at the floor, appearing very nearly demure. “I had tried to bring my concerns to you before, in such matters, and you had brushed them off, failing to listen to any word I might have to say about Thor which might have lessened his greatness in your eye.” He glanced back up sharply. “I knew no other way that I might prove to you the _validity_ of my concerns,  Odin All-Father.”

Odin hesitated, and looked then to his eldest son, standing not far from his brother, the tesseract in its case still dangling from one hand.

Quietly, Loki whispered, “Brother. Please.” He kept his eyes downcast, at first, but when Thor remained silent, he turned his head enough to show the cuts around his lips, and the _no really, I have a plan_ look in his eye, which he’d used on dozens of occasions and ventures with his brother. It was a simple enough manipulation: Thor still had some sentimental weakness against him.

Thor hesitated, then reluctantly spoke, “In truth, father, I fear he is not wrong. In the beginning of all of this, in his doubting me, he was not wrong. Had you not exiled me, I would be a truly unfit son, and an even more unfit prince––let alone king.”

Looking away quickly, restraining the shudder of relief and the tangled, spiked ball of emotion in his chest that seemed to be trying to smother his heart, Loki took a deep breath, and slowly let it out.

“You did, however, try to kill me not too long after,” Thor added, casually biting.

Snapping back into his composure, survival instinct so quick on the draw as to threaten to give him whiplash, Loki’s spine straightened, and he stared straight ahead. “Your wit has improved, at least,” he muttered under his breath, dry and humorless.

“In addition, you arranged to commit regicide against the king of Jotunheim, and then killed hundreds of his subjects by using the bïfrost as a weapon,” Odin added, his voice tight.

Loki looked up at his adoptive father. “Are you certain that you wish to have this conversation here?” he all but whispered. “You do yourself injury.”

Odin seemed to consider it, his expression momentarily crumpling with regret. “I accept responsibility for my mistakes, Loki. Do you?” he replied, just as quietly.

Loki swallowed thickly, unable to respond for a few moments. He looked away quickly. “I was––not thinking as clearly as I might have liked. I felt rather betrayed, given that I found my plotting of regicide was unexpectedly becoming patricide as well, much to my shock and dismay.” He couldn’t keep an edge of anger from his voice as he said it. _You could have told me. I had the right to know of this long, long ago._

The susurrus became a rumble of distant thunder, then, and Odin pounded the floor thrice with his staff before it again fell quiet. “But you were plotting it, even before then.”

“I had considered it, certainly. I had not made my decision. My designs remained open-ended for a long while. Admittedly, the more destructive options held considerably more favor only after our return from Jotunheim, where I’d discovered to my dismay that the searing-cold touch of frost giants left not a mark upon my skin––except to change it Jotun-blue, however briefly.”

Odin stared at him, eyes narrowed. His lips silently shaped the word _Theatrics_.

Loki shot him an arch look and mouthed back, _I learned from the best._

Again, three strikes, before the crowd fell silent.

“Do you blame your actions on your blood?” Odin asked, in a voice hovering between death-sentence and hearthside inquiry: loud, but not half so loud as he was capable of being.

“No.”

“Do you blame it on myself, for my failure to tell you the truth of your own nature?” The susurrus threatened to return at that.

His throat tighter with emotion than he would have preferred, Loki loudly snapped, “NO.”

The crowd fell silent of its own accord, then.

“Was it greed?” someone shouted. Sif, most likely. “Was it jealousy?”

The crowd breathed in at that, eager for his reply, save one: his brother. “Did you desire to rule Asgard?”

“In order: ‘yes’ to the first, ‘only a little’ to the second, and a resounding ‘no’ to the last,” Loki shouted, turning his head to look over the whole of the crowd properly for the first time. “I am a selfish creature at heart, as you all well know, but I am a practical one. Not even a dozen of you have ever trusted me to do more than feel _jealousy_ ––by the bloody Norns _why_ would I want to be duty- and honor-bound to listen to your needs and your wishes, and govern you with the sagacity and mercy that I would have no choice but to offer you, if only for the sake of my father’s honor.”

“Which father?” someone shouted.

Something in Loki’s composure snapped, then. “The one I _haven’t_ killed. Obviously.”

 _Clang. Clang. CLANG!_ The silence no longer retreated quickly as it had before. People were looking at the All-Father with new eyes. Seeds of doubt were sewn, landing in fertile, angry hearts.

Before his father could speak again, Loki continued, “I planned to kill their king and end the war swiftly, from the outset. It seemed the only way I could see to prevent damage to my home, and those I held dear. After confronting my father, and learning of my own true nature, I seized on still more destructive ideas. I felt a need to prove to myself that I was not one of those monsters.” His voice was that of an actor: cold, regal, and yet smooth enough to lure his audience into lowering their volume so that they could better hear it. “Heimdall had mentioned, just before we first left with Thor to Jotunheim, that leaving the bïfrost open would destroy Jotunheim entirely. That seemed an even swifter, more permanent route to peace. I know some among you see the sense it could make, and some of you older than I who recall the old wars and still feel hate for all frost giants, you might even love me for it, however reluctantly.” He tilted his head up, staring at the ceiling. “I recommend against that. Do not think I look fondly on those actions now––aside from your banishment, Thor, for which I refuse to apologize.” He tilted his head back a little further, meeting his brother’s eye.

Reluctantly, Thor nodded in concession.

“Following that, however, I acted just as childishly as my brother, and just as insensibly. My anger was merely of a deeper, more personal nature, but just as petty. I was desperate to prevent Thor’s return, to such an extent that I may have told him you were dead,” he said, meeting his father’s gaze again.

“I still haven’t forgiven that,” Thor cut in.

“Not now that you know I’m alive and evil, in any case?” Loki shot back.

“The latter I still find hard to believe.”

The god widened his eyes comically and shook his head as he stared at his brother. Out of the corner of his mouth, he muttered, “All-Father, I think that if you plan to let this man rule after you, that you should instill in him some common sense, diplomacy, and healthy suspicion of other people’s motives.”

“Loki,” Odin warned, and the sheer weight of pure anger he put into the syllables erased all trace of humor and all masks from his adopted son’s features, revealing only cold appraisal and a sort of morbid intrigue, just for a moment. “Give me one reason why you should not be punished to the full extent of the law for your crimes of treason, regicide, attempted fratricide, conspiracy, waging war in Midgard with a hostile race, and murder of hundreds, if not thousands of innocents throughout Midgard and Jotunheim.”

 _As well as a handful here at home_ , Loki thought, but did not add. It was on the tip of his tongue to bring up his father’s own history of war, occasional theft, and general inter-realm bullying, but he wisely bit back those responses. “Because Asgard needs to rebuild the bïfrost.”

The entire room seemed to suck in its collective breath. Loki only smiled, careful not to show his teeth: that seemed to unnerve people lately. “And I’m the only one you know capable of traveling between Asgard and nearly _all_ of the other realms by use of other means, which do not require us to cart about something so volatile as the tesseract. I can bring home the resources needed to rebuild, and thus work to mend some of the damage I have done,” Loki said, with perfectly smooth calm. It was not quite a lie. He was capable of all of those things, and he might even actually help them out where that was all concerned. He would need the bïfrost mended, should it ever prove necessary to summon warriors from Asgard to Earth on a whim. He had a number of potential plans such ease of access could prove useful for.

Odin looked him in the eye, less disappointed now, and a little more suspicious. Loki almost smiled at him and ruined it all then and there. It was charming to see his father at last beginning to understand him. “You know where to find the elements we need, too, I presume?”

“I know a lot of things.” He did show his teeth then, like a flash of light off a dagger blade: quick and sharp. “Someone had to learn the arts of diplomacy.” He glanced quickly in Thor’s direction and raised his eyebrows pointedly.

“‘Diplomacy’ may not quite be the word for it, my son.”

The god of mischief closed his eyes for a moment, far too relieved to be called that, especially now. “Perhaps not,” he agreed in soft tones, but still challengingly met his father’s gaze again. It had not occurred to him before, but there was something quite liberating to the sensation of causing Odin to feel distrust. Here was Odin All-Father, the all-seeing and all-knowing––in theory, at least––but for the fact that Loki sometimes-Odinson could hide vast things from him, dangerous things, and now everyone knew it. It savored of vindication. _I am not to be ignored._ That alone could become a new fixation.

“How, then, can we be sure that you will keep your word, Lie-smith,” Odin said, when he stepped closer, too quiet for even Thor to quite hear.

Loki smiled, in equal parts loving and laughing. “You can promise me something other than freedom. For freedom, I can always find a way to steal, Father.”

Odin glanced idly at the tesseract, then met Loki’s gaze again with narrowed eyes, but his younger son only smiled a little wider and shook his head. The All-Father shot him a questioning look.

“Swear to me that you will keep a closer eye on us,” Loki hissed. “And that you will not be so blind as you were the day you decided my brother was ready to be a king.” He raised his still-shackled hands, and rested them over one of his father’s. “I love you as your son, but I have never felt such anger before, such that I could almost hate you, and truly did begin to hate Thor. Up to then, I had never felt more _protective_ and more frightened, for the sake of my home and my family.”

Odin looked down at him, as if from a great distance. Loki felt as though he were again hanging from the edge of the broken rainbow bridge, looking past Thor’s furious attempt to save him to their father, who would tell him whether or not it was even worth it to let them pretend that they could.

“You have both grown into very different men than I had thought you were,” Odin said softly, barely audible. “It will be a very long time until I will feel that I understand either of you anymore. I will be watching, Loki.”

“But will you listen, too?” Loki countered, a bit of venom in his tone that he could not restrain.

“I have certainly learned not to underestimate the weight of your words.” His eyes narrowed. “Rest assured I will be listening, even when you wish I would not.”

Somehow, Loki found that far less reassuring than he thought he would. He raised his hands from his father’s, displaying his still-shackled wrists. Loudly enough to be heard by every set of ears in the room, he announced, “I am yours to command, All-Father, until we have all that we might need to rebuild what Thor and I inadvertently destroyed.” A pause. Quieter, he muttered, “Well. Except the lives of innocents, which _was_ mostly me. I wouldn’t even know where to start, there.”

“You will swear to this, Loki Lie-Smith?” Thor rumbled.

“I swear upon my life,” the god of mischief countered, sincere for the nonce. He looked to Thor briefly. “And I have little doubt that if I stray from my labors, then you or Heimdall will doubtlessly hold me to that.”

“Then let that be your sentence, Loki Odinson,” said the All-Father. “You will provide for our architects and our builders. You will commit no murders and start no wars in the process, on pain of death.”

Loki frowned. _I don’t recall agreeing to_ those _conditions_.

Odin’s eye narrowed. “Upon completion of these labors, you will once more be a citizen of Asgard, and free of incarceration––unless you once more break our laws. Any further actions of treason, conspiracy or unlawful killing of innocents will see you locked away as would befit a monster.”

Very quietly, Loki started to inquire, “You specified _lawful_ killing-”

“During your labor, no death you deal, not even in defense of yourself or others, will be considered lawful,” Odin rumbled. “Perhaps this will improve your caution, and your diplomacy both.” His expression was as fatherly and disapproving as it was possible to be.

Feeling younger than he had in some time, Loki found himself voicing his consent. He had feigned good behavior for years at a time before now. Surely he could manage this much, to appease the general public at least. The excuse to travel with some measure of Asgardian protection throughout the realms, looking for rare and powerful materials, was a pretense he could benefit from greatly. The rebuilding of the bïfrost and some further refortification of Asgard would be an excellent fringe benefit, too.

He truly had never wanted the throne of Asgard, but his position as the strongest mage and greatest liar in residence had given him more unspoken control over people and events than most realized. One did not need to be a king in order to rule, and Loki wanted more to rule his Asgard, the Asgard that he had woven his webs throughout, than he ever desired to do her harm.

His eyes fell shut as his father unlocked the cuffs around his wrists, and felt the suffocating, magic-smothering cloak about him dissipate. Shuddering with relief, he sent out his awareness through the whole chamber, through the floor and as deep into the land as he could reach in his still weakened state. His head cleared––more clear and still and blissfully his own than it had been in months––and he slumped forward as it finally hit him: _I’m home._ He clung to it and breathed it in, his shoulders shaking slightly.

He hardly even noticed the crowd being ushered out, or the guards standing between himself and the eyes of the audience, their backs to them. Instant privacy, if still a bit limited. When he could again steady his breathing and sit up properly, Loki found his father staring down at him with renewed concern.

“What did you see, my son, when you fell?”

Loki’s jaw clenched. “A great many things. One or two of which we should discuss some other time.”

“How long did you fall?” He rested his hand on the younger man’s shoulder, squeezed once, then reached to take hold of his upper arm, helping to pull him to his feet. His touch was very, very warm.

Unable to prevent himself leaning into the contact, his body still wracked with faint intermittent tremors from weariness he had not allowed himself to feel, and had been trying to ignore, ever since he’d unleashed the Chitauri over that mad Midgardian’s tower, Loki shook his head. “Too long, I think.” He stilled entirely when his father pulled him down, until their foreheads met. Odin had one hand lifted to stroke his hair, and he could feel it shaking. “Father?”

“I had thought you dead, Loki,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with genuine pain. “I never wish to think that again.”

Stunned, Loki felt frozen to the spot, breathing shallowly as he tried to hold himself together. It was unfair that he could be weakened like this, so quickly and with seemingly so little effort. He hesitantly returned his father’s embrace, for what felt like the first time in a millennia. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, too sincere, too much feeling in it. The words felt like knives working their way between his ribs, but he couldn’t help himself. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

“I should beat the living daylights out of you,” Odin muttered, pulling back a bit at last, and touching his youngest son’t face. “Though from what I hear, a few Midgardians have already done that for me.”

Loki winced. “Admittedly, I underestimated the green one.”

Odin laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

Thor stepped near to them with obvious hesitation. “Brother.”

Loki turned to him, body suddenly tense again as he met his brother’s gaze. “I’m hesitant to let you embrace me, but mostly because you’ve suffocated me in that fashion even before I tried to kill you.”

“Loki,” Odin growled.

The god of mischief sighed, reaching for a suitable set of masks. “I am sorry. Brother. In time, perhaps, we might again be comfortable with one another.” _Though I do doubt it_ , was heavily implied. He was very tired, and had used up most of his performance art over the past half hour. As if to further remind him of what other reserves he had used up, Loki found himself swaying on his feet, and quickly stopped it. “Father, perhaps we should begin planning my labor. I will need a dozen or so maps, and three roast pheasants.”

“Mother would like a word with you first, Loki,” Thor said.

Loki had felt her absence from the proceedings quite keenly, and felt suddenly as though his limbs were made of lead. “Oh. Of course.”

Clumsily, through a haze of emotional and physical exhaustion, Loki’s return to Asgard proceeded from there.

 

~~

 

It took several months for things to fall apart with Pepper, and Tony is honestly a bit proud of that. They did well. He proved to himself that monogamy was a viable option, and for a while he made Pepper happy. For a while.

In fact, he’d have crawled into a bottle for the first week after it ended, if not for sheer stubbornness. He knew everyone expected him to get drunk and stay that way for a good long time, and proving them wrong was enough to keep him mostly-sober for a full month. That said, he didn’t see daylight more than four times that month, but he did manage to create a suit that could conduct repairs on itself while in use––at least a little bit. It couldn’t fix itself cosmetically yet, but it could keep him in the air even with flight-critical parts of the suit crushed in.

It was a start, anyway. Give him another month with an average of less than three hours of sleep every two days, and it would start looking like magic.

So what if three out of the four times he’d left the house entirely that month had been strictly for Avengers-related matters, like Doctor Doom causing havoc in Los Angeles for no very good reason. It was month two now, and he’d actually attended a few public social events without any major mishaps, except the one that caught fire, but that was Steve’s fault.

Tony felt he was more than allowed to retreat back into his lab for another week or two without anyone shooting him concerned looks. He was fine. He was working. He was perfectly well adjusted and he was not thinking that he was a failure who couldn’t keep hold of someone he cared about for longer than half a year without one or both of them falling out of love. Well––he was working, anyway.

The music cut out abruptly.

“Tony.”

He shut off the torch, leaned back, and lifted his goggles. “Yes, darling?”

Rhodey glared at him.

Tony grinned humorlessly.

“What are you doing down here?”

“Working.”

“I mean, why aren’t you acting a bit more like Tony Stark?”

A clang as Tony dropped something important-sounding and cursed. “Days at time with no sleep, elbow deep in high-tech machines, and listening to music that’s way too loud. How am I not acting like Tony Stark?”

“Because usually this doesn’t last more than a week before you get it into your head to throw a party, or harass one of the other Avengers at their day jobs, or drag me off somewhere with strippers because I dropped by to remind you to suck it up and quit hiding in the basement like a lunatic.”

“I _am_ a lunatic.”

“Yes, but you’re also human. And I think we both know why you’re trying to forget that down here.”

Tony couldn’t help it. He punched Rhodey.

Rhodey anticipated it, managed to move with it to minimize the damage, and kicked Tony’s chair over, sending the engineer clattering to the floor with a stream of curses. “Can you get up?”

“... No.”

“Dammit, I know Pepper is still reminding you to eat daily.”

 _By leaving voicemails, or text messages, never actually calling me, or coming down here,_ Tony couldn’t help but think. “Sorta, yeah. Hard to notice, really.”

Rhodey sighed and held out a hand. “Get up, you idiot.”

Tony took it, and let his friend pull him to his feet, whereupon he swayed dangerously and gripped Rhodey’s shoulders. “Alright. Fine. Let’s go get fucking food.”

“Where to?”

Tony considered. “Where’s a good place around here for foie gras? I feel a sudden deep, abiding hatred for geese.”

“Geese?”

“Don’t question it.”

 

~~

 

Tony managed to keep down enough food for three men, and had even lured a waitress into his lap when his phone beeped urgently at him. He ignored it, but the thing then vibrated insistently, and a dry British voice emanated from it, “No, really, sir, this is quite important.”

Rhodey raised an eyebrow at him, and Tony apologized to the waitress. “I’ve got to take this,” he said. “But my friend here would love to tell you an interesting little story...” He whispered in her ear. She smiled, and migrated to Rhodey’s lap.

“Tony!”

Tony placed his credit card on the edge of Rhodey’s plate. “I expect to get that back before tomorrow afternoon, and no buying cars with it again.” He whipped out his phone as he strode from the table, and managed exactly three paces before coming to an abrupt halt as all the blood drained from his face. “Oh. Oh shit.”

In his bluetooth headset, JARVIS said, “I did try to tell you, sir.”

Tony swallowed thickly. He sent Rhodey a quick text about not spending too much on a cab. It ended with “Ironman business. Urgent thing.” He asked JARVIS to send another one at 2am tomorrow, which would read “If you don’t hear from me again by noon, call Fury. Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

He then bolted to the car and got the reliable red-and-gold suitcase from his trunk. Stepping into the suit, he double-checked the coordinates. They still looked suspiciously like the coordinates of his house. At least it hadn’t been until-recently-Stark Tower, which was now all full of Avengers most days. That would’ve been awkward. “Ohhh shit, what am I doing?” he breathed, and then took off as though trying to outrun several possible answers.

 

~~

 

Loki wasn’t surprised that they’d been reluctant to let him return to Midgard for so long, and doubtlessly Thor would be enraged to find out he’d wandered off here, of all places, but––well. He’d kept track of that little device Stark had tucked under his collar all those months ago for a number of reasons, curiosity chief among them.

Tony Stark was, Loki couldn’t help but think ( _Is this meant to appeal to my humanity, Tony Stark?)_ almost dangerously ( _No. Not at all. Quite the opposite._ ) interesting.

And besides that, the man could manufacture a particularly rare element found in very few places throughout the realms, which just so happened to be on his list of resources needed to repair a certain bridge. Surely striking a deal with Stark would be easier than finding some obscure place to mine for it, or process it themselves. So Loki reasoned, in any case. So far as Asgard might be aware, he’d told them that mining for it was a rather less viable option straight off, not bothering with anything troublesome like research. Thus they had saved this endeavor very nearly for last. Only three more dull little trips to bargain for resources, and soon the god of mischief could be, so far as Asgard might be concerned, free to do as he wished––at least until he broke a few more laws again.

So he stood in the middle of Tony Stark’s workshop, unbothered by the lack of light. Initially, the artificial intelligence in the ceiling offered a polite warning while arming numerous defense systems. Loki raised the little device between his thumb and forefinger, and pressed the little button to turn it on. A chime resonated from the AI. “Ah. My apologies. Good evening, Loki Lie-Smith.”

“They do like that name lately. I’m almost getting partial to it again myself,” the god mused.  It had less baggage than either Odinson or Laufeyson, in any case, which was quite beneficial. And it sounded less like a come-on than Silver-tongue. “You must be... JARVIS, was it?”

“Yes, sir. Would you like me to turn on the lights?”

“That would be lovely.”

The lights came up, and so did Loki’s eyebrows. “My. Someone’s been busy.” The smells of relatively fresh oil, smoke, and only recently-cooled metal alloys had let him know that major work had been underway a mere hour or so ago. “And it seems I’ve only just missed him.”

“Relatively speaking, yes, sir.”

“I suppose that all this has sent a signal to Stark, too, wherever he may happen to be?” Loki smiled around the words and he began to walk slowly around one or two intriguing prototypes that Tony seemed to have been working on, all at different degrees of relative completion.

“Yes. I do believe he is on his way.”

Loki pulled up a chair next to one of the machines and began gently exploring it with his fingers, his eyes narrowed. “Excellent. Do let me know when he gets close.”

 

~~

 

Tony had spent the entirety of the flight calling himself an idiot for not contacting anyone else in the Avengers, and trying to work out what on Earth Loki might be after this time. As he arrived, he resolved that his only option, really, was to distract the god with enough banter to work out whether he should actually raise the alarm.

“JARVIS, dare I ask what he’s doing in there?”

“He appears to be making a detailed examination of the prototype ultra-freon generator.”

Tony winced slightly at that. Of course the frost giant was playing with his ‘freeze ray’ prototype. “Let me guess: he’s amused.”

“It seems so, sir.”

“Charming.” He hovered briefly over the house, then at last perched on the landing pad.

“I take it you would prefer to keep the armor on for the present?”

“Yes. Just take me down.” The platform hissed, then lowered him smoothly through the house, and down into his lab. He flipped up the mask to be moderately polite, and fixed his eyes on the Norse god who seemed to be carefully adjusting something in the aforementioned prototype. It was a larger, clumsier model Tony needed for the sake of testing before he bothered slimming it down. “Try not to break it, please.”

“I wasn’t actually planning to. I admit I find the concept entertaining.”

“Maybe I could get a few ideas from watching you at work with your own version of it,” Tony mused, a bit irritated.

To his surprise, Loki hummed thoughtfully. “Possibly.”

Blinking off his initial bemusement, Tony folded his arms over his chest. “I suppose I should ask what you’re doing here.” He almost added _dressed like that_ , but bit his tongue. He was used to seeing Loki in full battle regalia. Seeing him instead in black jeans, Harley Davidson boots, and a forest green collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, was a little surreal.

Loki finished whatever he was doing and finally looked up, setting Tony’s tools aside precisely where he’d found them. “I’m here with something of a business matter, actually.”

“You’re alive _and_ in business. And here I expected you were fleeing your parole officer or something.”

“Well, that too, but only a little,” Loki deadpanned. “It’s not ‘fleeing’ so much as simply feeding him false information as to where I actually planned to spend my evening.”

Tony raised an eyebrow.

“Thor may or may not be under the impression that I’m keeping away from all of his friends who happen to be Avengers. I didn’t feel the need to mention one of them had invited me to meet under, hmm, ‘different circumstances’ I believe it was.”

“But they don’t have a problem with you being on Earth in general?”

“Well, no one is thrilled with it, one might say, but my sentence comes with a number of stipulations. One of them requires me to go looking for the necessary resources to repair a certain bridge.” He was smirking now. “Midgard has something they need, and my sentence has appointed me as the god to fetch it.”

Against his better judgement, Tony found himself returning the smirk. Things were already looking less hostile, and this back and forth was quick and witty enough to be rather refreshing. “You talked them out of executing you, then.”

“They took off the gag to let me speak for myself. That’s always a calculated risk: in that I might happen to persuade them of just about anything.” He sat back in one of Tony’s chairs, arms folded behind his head and his long legs crossed at the ankle. “Including an excuse to keep me out of chains, with a respectable force behind me if I might require it as I go about acquiring rare materials from all sorts of place that happen to possess rare, powerful, and dangerous matter.”

“That’s a light sentence for you.”

“If I kill anyone––justifiably or otherwise––or if I start any wars, my life is made forfeit and there’s a long line of people in Asgard alone who would love to have the pleasure of killing me,” Loki added.

“That sounds more like it.”

“Father snuck those requirements in at the last minute,” the god of mischief sneered.

“So you’re here to steal something?”

“Not really. I need far more of it than I could possibly steal. I’m here to offer you an exclusive contract with the bridge-maker’s guild of Asgard.” He grinned brightly.

“You’re already bored with collecting this stuff, aren’t you?”

“You have _no_ idea,” Loki said through his teeth, still smiling.

“What do you need?”

“A certain element, very rare, with properties which resist magic of my sort, notably.” He looked down at Tony’s suit briefly, then tapped his own sternum to illustrate. “You have a bit of it with you at all times.”

“You want me to process it for you. How much?”

“Converting to local Midgardian measures... oh, about 2.4 metric tons.”

Tony whistled. “JARVIS. Suit.”

A wall of machinery lowered between himself and the god of mischief for several seconds. When it retreated, Tony stood there wearing just Armani, instead of armor, he then shrugged out of the suit jacket, too. Rolling up his sleeves, he turned to one of his touch screens and activated it, tapping out a few calculations. “Hmm. That would take a lot of power. And likely a bigger facility. Last time I made some in this lab, the structural repairs to the place afterward were substantial.” He clicked his tongue, feeling more himself than he had for weeks: sharp and thrilling and Tony Stark, brokering a deal with the devil––or at least the god of lies and mischief. Close enough. “What are you all offering?”

Loki considered.

“I’m sure they gave you a list of things to bargain, yeah?”

“Oh, of course.” He was still looking thoughtful.

“Then why do you look like you’re getting creative?”

Loki shook his head. “I have an offer for you, Mr. Stark, not strictly from Asgard.”

“Tony,” he corrected, just to be cheeky.

The god’s smirk widened as he inclined his head. “Tony.” Rising to his feet with frankly astonishing grace for someone with such length of limb, Loki spread his arms a little, palms forward. “I can offer you _me_.”

For a moment, Tony was bemused. Then a second later he was a bit aroused, then disconcerted by his own arousal, then self-chastising, and finally just outright curious. It took a total of four seconds for his expression to resolve into something readable: calm and shrewd. “Expand on that a bit, please. I’m sure there are limitations here, but I’m too boggled by the possibilities to reign them in,” he deadpanned.

Loki smirked, and stepped closer. “You already made mention of it. With your machines, you create and exert power. I do rather the same, though in ways that stretch your understanding of physics to the breaking point, I’m sure.” He extended a hand to one of the inactive touch-screens nearby, and a thin layer of frost formed around his fingertips, a swirling tracery of ice emanating from his touch and out across the rest of the screen’s surface.

“Did your skin just turn kind of blue for a second?”

“Frost giant,” Loki reminded.

“I was unaware blue was a common color for them.”

Loki blinked at that, apparently unsure how to respond for once. “Hmm.”

“I’d think you’d have noticed that sort of thing a long time ago, though.”

“Not until one of them grabbed my arm with intent to cause a case of frostbite.” His expression remained carefully neutral. “The attempt failed.”

“And... your arm turned blue?”

A twitch, just ever so slight. The trickster’s air of casual, unaffected ease grew stiff with tension, just for a moment. “Yes.”

Tony hummed, getting that distinct, almost giddy sensation that tended to precede extremely questionable life-choices on his part. He stepped around Loki, eyeing him in unconscious mimicry of the way the god had circled some of the machines in his workshop earlier. “Thor mentioned that you all have magic, but it’s really a highly advanced form of science. My guess is you understand the details a fair bit better than he does. His explanations tended to be a bit hand-wavy.”

“Yes,” Loki replied, looking amused again now, and a bit challenging. “I’ll trade you knowledge, and some experimental privileges.”

“I’ll have to develop some scanners to pick up readings from you while you work your magic, I suppose.”

“Very likely.”

“And I’ll need a larger space to process this stuff for you anyway. This is a lot of up-front investment I’d be putting in for not a lot of solid returns.”

“Yes.” Loki leaned in just a little, until their faces were scarcely a foot apart. “But you are _curious_.”

Tony felt a thrill down his spine as his heartbeat sped up. _Like staring down a panther or something. God, his eyes are green. Get a grip, Tony, this danger-fetish really doesn’t help your ‘I don’t have a death wish’ case at all._ He kept his voice very even, “I do suppose I am. Not sure this is an equal trade so far, though.”

“Choose your location, preferably one requiring relatively minimal construction, other than laboratory equipment and so forth, and I will acquire it. I know of a few possible places off the top of my head anyway.”

“You’d have to stick around for all of this experimenting, and it could take a while. Not much more on your grocery list aside from this?”

“They sent _me_ of all people to _Earth_ for this, Tony,” he mused. “We’ve reached the point where desperation of a sort has begun to creep in for them. This element is one of only three more resources left on my list, yes. The others will require theft, and are thus pending review.” He sneered visibly. “Really, it’s like they just don’t trust me or something.”

“Depends on how likely the theft is to cause a war or get people killed.”

“Then they can send Thor after it. People are less likely to consider his actions war-worthy so long as I’m not also directly involved. Well––so far, anyway.”

“What do you plan on doing once you’re done?”

Loki smirked. “I’ve collected a few interesting things not related to my little quest. I’ve a mind to do whatever I might like with them.”

“Not wars?”

“I’m still only preparing for the one war, no worries there,” he assured. “I have a number of plans in place.” He smirked broadly. “Afterwards I might even vacation in Midgard and give you Avengers something to worry about.”

“I don’t suppose I could put ‘no kill’ requests on people as part of our contract?”

“The contract has a limited coverage period: I am released from _all_ obligations once Asgard has what they need of me.”

Tony considered thoughtfully. “You’ll provide the location.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll cover equipment expenses and power?”

“I’m sure I can work something out.”

Tony clicked his tongue. “You leave my people out of this whenever possible: the Avengers, Pepper, Rhodey, my driver, most of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as Stark Enterprises employees and their families. Keep the press out, and the police, and the military.”

Loki waved off his concerns. “Fine, fine, yes.”

“Also, for experimental purposes, you will have to spend long periods of time in my workshop stripped to the waist,” he added, before he could stop himself. “For science, of course.”

The god looked mildly bemused, but shrugged it off. “I will object to experiments which are outright undignified, I hope you’re aware.”

“What are your parameters for dignity?”

“You’ll find out if you veer too far from them.”

“No throwing me out of windows. Not even if I’m in the suit.”

The god sighed, looking thoroughly put-out. “If you insist.”

“I really do. You have any further conditions?”

“My state of undress, for experimental purposes, is to be matched by yours,” he deadpanned.

Tony blinked. That could prove interesting. He nodded, becoming aware of just how surreal this entire conversation had been, and how it had only gotten progressively more surreal the longer it went on. “Acceptable.”

“Also, my brother is not allowed in the laboratory. Ever.”

“Still not quite mended that particular bridge?”

“He’s still an idiot.”

“Fair enough.”

“Before we finalize this agreement, I do have one question.”

“Hmm?”

Loki proceeded to pin him against the work table bodily, his mouth soft and cool and encouraging against Tony’s, luring him into the kiss before the engineer could even quite process the contact. One cool hand cupped the engineer’s jaw, holding him firmly in place. It was surprisingly slow, deepening quickly as Loki’s tongue began to explore his mouth. Still trying to catch up, the engineer found himself probing Loki’s mouth in turn: tasting glaciers and apples. Tony had instinctively gripped the god’s waist, and seemed to consider pushing him away, but hesitated. Then Loki’s knee slipped between Tony’s legs and Loki used a bit of leverage to apply just the right amount of pressure against the mortal engineer’s already half-hard erection. Tony’s fingers gripped tighter, pulled the infuriating god still closer with a low groan. He broke away, just briefly, hands sliding under Loki’s shirt. “This is a question?”

“No, but I thought it high time I got around to it,” the god of mischief countered, his lips still brushing the engineer’s. “Problem?”

“Yeah. We’re still talking.” He licked at the god’s lower lip and made a low sound when Loki caught his tongue and sucked hard.

The kiss went on for several minutes, and the frotting got a bit rougher, until Tony thought he’d go insane. He broke away with a gasp, only to dart back in and bite at Loki’s long neck and roll his hips up in a sinuous motion that made the god of mischief moan rather prettily. He heard Loki’s breathing, almost as rough as his own, and could feel it––almost cold––against his ear, giving him goosebumps.

It sunk in, at some point after he’d gotten his hands in Loki’s pants, that he was rutting like a horny teenager against the Norse god of chaos and mischief who’d thrown him out of a very high window not long after they’d first met. Shortly after, it sunk in that the god in question was hot and hard in his hand, rutting against Tony Goddamn Stark like an equally horny teenager. He tightened his grip a little, started stroking a little harder, and enjoyed the fluttering hitched breath against his neck. “But you did _have_ a question?” Tony panted.

Loki made a mostly-incoherent sound and removed the rest of the engineer’s clothes with a snap of his fingers. Tony startled a bit at the feel of cool metal against the base of his spine where he was still pinned against one of his work tables.

“That’s––ohgod––that’s fucking cheating,” he managed, as the god’s cool and clever fingers crept up along his inner thigh.

Loki chuckled and let the engineer push his jeans down until they slid to the floor. Kicking them away, he gripped Tony’s ass and pulled them flush together. “My question,” he mused, and bucked his hips at the same time his teeth brushed Tony’s throat, making the mortal bite back a curse. “I rather think you’ve answered all but one, now.”

“You’re a goddamn tease.”

“You want to ride, or be ridden, Tony?” the god purred in his ear.

“Oh. Fuck. Ahhh hard to think when you’re doing that.” Despite his protest, he made a sound of disapproval when Loki ceased those rolling, sinuously fricative little movements against him. “I didn’t say stop,” he growled.

“Then _you_ stop thinking.”

“Around you? I value my life, I me––” He cut off with a quick intake of breath as Loki’s lips brushed the skin at the top edge of the arc reactor. It didn’t make much sense, as the scar tissue wasn’t exactly sensitive, but the cool wet tongue and occasional scrape of teeth were novel, and made his knees feel a bit weak, especially with those graceful, long-fingered hands stroking down his sides until Loki’s thumbs framed his hips. “Lubrication. Necessary,” Tony groaned, with conviction.

“You’ve chosen, then?”

Tony glanced over his shoulder at the tabletop behind them, and shoved a few things to the floor. “Conditional.”

“I’m hardly a barbarian.”

“Viking.”

“Hmm.” Loki smirked up at him, then knelt.

Tony’s brain ceased to function altogether. His fingers tangled in the god’s hair. All things considered, the man’s mouth was far hotter than it had any right to be. _How common is it for Asgardian men to have no gag reflex whatsoever?_ He held up admirably against the assault, and less so when Loki pulled away. At that point, Tony quietly swore a blue streak, his legs threatening to give out. Then Loki slipped two longer fingers into him, slick and not too cold and okay, yes, riding Loki was sounding better and better.

“Do you seriously have a means of magically summoning lube?” Loki set a bottle of baby oil on the work table next to him, and Tony cleared his throat. “There’s a perfectly innocent reason that was down here in the workshop.”

Loki captured his mouth again to shut him up, and Tony could taste his own pre-come on the lie-smith’s tongue, which seemed to be mimicking the movements of Loki’s fingers in him. _Terribly unfair_. Then the kiss broke and Loki all but purred, low and harsh, “You can either lean back, or turn around.” He added another finger, and began very deliberately putting pressure on Tony’s prostate with every little thrust of his hand.

Tony groaned, arching his hips in response. It had been a long while, and really turning around seemed the best option insofar as preventing soreness in the morning, but then his eyes fell open and met Loki’s fever-bright ones. Decision made: _I want to watch you fall apart_. Stopping Loki’s hand reluctantly, Tony shifted back and lifted his hips enough to perch on the edge of the table. For emphasis, he wrapped a leg around the god of chaos and pulled him in. “Ready for me, darling?” he challenged, droll.

Loki settled between his legs, comfortable as you please, one hand between them as he prepped himself. “You still surprise me. I’d started to miss being surprised.”

“Home too dull?”

“Terribly. More so than I recalled.” He began to press into Tony’s body, inch by inch, slow enough to make them both moan quietly.

Frustration aside, Tony felt glad for the chance to relax into it, and adjust to the faintly-burning stretch. He made a low noise in his throat before he could restrain it, then muttered, “Fuck.”

Loki was a bit beyond coherent verbalization by this point, his mind focused on things like heat and tightness and the faint coconut-metal tang of Tony’s sweat on his tongue where he bit gently at the side of Tony’s neck. He managed a syllable of concern regardless. “Mmn?” Roughly translated: _does this require me to stop?_

“Don’t stop. Stop and I’ll find a way to kill you,” Tony breathed, then exhaled sharply as Loki tugged him down hard onto the last two inches. “ _Fuck_.”

“You don’t stop talking for long, do you?” Loki mused, curling a hand around Tony’s cock and bracing the other on the table as he began to move.

Further proving the god of mischief’s point, Tony shuddered and mumbled a few curses in a mixture of English and a couple of other languages he’d learned to curse in at a young age, then promptly forgot all the rest of the vocabulary for. The push and pull he felt with each thrust was steadily erasing his higher faculties, while the clever hand stroking him drove all the remaining faculties slowly and gloriously mad. “Ah, fuck, you’re good at this,” he managed, his voice uneven as the god of mischief unerringly, relentlessly struck just where pressure and friction were most needed.

Loki was satisfactorily compromised as well, at least. His breathing rapid and a little uneven as he slowly picked up the pace, shifting one of Tony’s legs higher to change the angle so that the smaller man all but saw stars. He focused on Tony’s face with an almost daunting intensity as he rode the mortal through an orgasm of bone-melting quality, his pace unrelenting, though becoming less coordinated as Tony clenched around him and gave a low cry against the trickster’s god’s red mouth.

Tony pulled him down then, with a growl, and ground his hips down hard. “Your turn,” he hissed, wearing a fierce look, hungry despite how boneless he felt, each thrust and grind between them sending a near-painful spark through him, drawing out the bliss. “Come for me, Loki.”

The god held his gaze, looking flushed and intent and gorgeous and a bit pleasantly stunned. He cursed in a language that sounded quite Nordic, and began to fall apart, shuddering as he came with a few more rough thrusts. He hissed when Tony’s leg around him pulled him closer and the engineer kept moving against him, clenching just a bit, keeping them both on that edge between pain and pleasure until even Loki’s arms began to shake. By silent agreement, Tony slumped back on the table, pulling the god down with him, and Loki sprawled over him a bit as they caught their respective breaths.

“Not required by contract,” Tony managed to pant after a few moments, “but I’m more than willing to pursue this particular experiment further. Anytime you like, really.”

Loki huffed, amused and breathless against his collarbone. “Agreed.”

“Though I’d already decided to accept your terms before this, for the record.”

“I’m aware.”

“Good,” Tony muttered, his eyelids fluttering shut. “Excellent.”

They rested there for several minutes before it quite occurred to Tony that a bed might be a better idea. Loki concurred.

 

~~

 

Tony was awoken up by insistent noises from his phone sometime around 5am. He reached for it and held it to his head. “What? What is it?”

“ _Tony, you’re an ass. Why did you send me that text at two in the morning?_ ”

He opened his mouth to protest that he couldn’t possibly have, given that he’d been busy giving a Norse god a blowjob in the shower at about that time, but then recalled he’d told JARVIS to send it shortly before he left the restaurant. “Uhm. Long story. Look, I got home fine an’ I’m in bed mostly asleep.” He felt an amused huff of breath against the back of his neck and smirked.

“ _Tony, you only send me messages like that when you think you’re walking into a trap of some kind._ ”

“Rhodey, look-”

“ _And you usually are._ ”

“Well, maybe, but look-”

Loki’s hand deftly snatched the phone. “Hello. I’m the potential trap in question, and I’m currently naked in Tony Stark’s bed. Do you really need to know much more than that?”

“ _What. I. Really?”_

Tony sniggered helplessly, imagining the look on Rhodey’s face.

“Yes. And before you ask: no, I don’t actually plan to kill him. I’m not allowed to kill _anyone_ these days,” Loki said, sounding wistful.

A long pause from Rhodey. “ _Oh...kay then. Can I... Can I please talk to Tony?_ ”

Loki handed the phone over.

“I told you I’m fine,” Tony said into the phone. “Can we go back to sleep now?”

“ _Tony. Who... who is that?_ ”

“Long story,” Tony repeated, then shivered as he felt Loki’s mouth doing something interesting between his shoulder blades. “Later.”

“ _Anthony Stark, what-_ ”

“Listen, Rhodey, I have a deity in my bed requesting sex, and I’m hanging up now because I don’t really want you listening in.”

“ _Jesus. No details. I don’t even––deity?!_ ”

Tony ended the call and dropped his phone back on the nightstand, arching his back a bit, thoroughly enjoying the attention. “That’s gonna come back to bite me.”

“On that note,” Loki murmured against his spine. “Given you’ve agreed to certain contractual terms.” A bite, sharp enough to earn a little gasp, then soothing licks. “I find myself obliged to spend a while in Midgard for your convenience.”

“Yeees?” Tony was starting to writhe a little, trying to get more contact.

“I’d like.” He bit at Tony’s shoulder. “To come back.” Then his neck. “To bite you.” he nipped Tony’s earlobe, then sucked at the tender skin.

“As I said,” Tony said calmly. “Anytime.”

“I do not _share_ , Tony.”

For some reason, that possessive edge made him shudder. “I don’t get out much lately.”

A bite at his neck again, a little harder: a warning.

Tony pressed up into it, challenging. “So, remind me: who’s your parole officer and how will you be handling this, there?”

Loki hesitated, licked at the reddened skin as an afterthought.

“It’s your brother, isn’t it?”

As if on cue, Tony heard another phone go off: decidedly not his. Loki cursed in at least three languages. The engineer reached over the edge of the bed and grabbed Loki’s jeans from the floor. He pulled a sleek-looking phone from one pocket. The called ID showed “Thunderous Idiot” calling. Tony sniggered.

Loki snatched it from his hand and reluctantly answered the call. “Yes?” A pause. “Of course I’m not there. I’ve been making arrangements with a supplier.” He gestured idly and summoned an official-looking document and a pen seemingly from the ether. He licked his thumb and drew it over a few of the paragraphs, which changed from unrecognizable glyphs to neatly printed English-legalese. He handed it to Tony, who scanned it while Loki made the occasional thoughtful sound at something his brother said.

It was a surprisingly forthright document, and Tony managed to speed-read through it pretty quickly. He took the pen from Loki’s hand and signed in the appropriate places. Loki smiled a shockingly sincere smile, then said, “No, no, there’s really no need for that. No, I _wasn’t_ actually listening to you prattle on. You mentioned the girl so I took that opportunity to get the contract signed rather than paying any attention to any words you happened to be saying.” He signed one or two places on the paper himself, then vanished pen and contract the way he did everything else. “No, I will not tell you where I am. I’m not _even_ threatening anyone.”

Tony distinctly heard, “ _Brother, you should not do this here. I hardly trust you in this realm any farther than_ you _can throw Mjolnir._ ”

Loki’s expression became rather annoyed. “I’m aware.”

“ _Where are you?_ ”

Tony snatched the phone, ignoring the look of mixed outrage and surprise on Loki’s face. “Hey, Thor. It’s Tony.”

“ _T...Tony? Tony Stark?_ ”

“The one and only, blondie. Look, everything’s fine, trust me. Avenger’s honor.”

“ _Why are you with my brother? And why has he not yet dislocated your arm and taken back his phone?_ ”

“Why would he do that? I just signed off on this contract to help you both with this bridge problem.” He grinned at Loki, who still appeared to be caught somewhere between scandalized and intrigued.

There was long pause on the other end, and Tony could hear a feminine voice in the background asking questions. “You alright there, Thor?”

“ _I am... perplexed._ ”

Loki chose that moment to snap back into character and press the full length of his body against the back of Tony’s, resting his chin on the engineer’s shoulder so the phone was between his ear and Tony’s, allowing him to both listen and interject. “That is your usual state of being, is it not?”

“Loki,” Tony muttered, his eyes half-closed. “Not fair.”

“ _What’s he doing?_ ”

Tony fully intended to reply, until Loki’s hand drifted down from his waist, along his stomach, to his already half-hard erection. “ _Uhm_ ,” he managed, rather eloquently.

“He’s perfectly fine, Thor. We’re quite occupied, however.”

The female voice on the other end said something that sounded like, “ _Well just put them on speaker_.”

Tony could feel the curl of Loki’s smirk against his neck, along with the vibrations of a low, thoroughly evil laugh, and barely restrained a moan. This did not bode well. The sound quality on the other end changed just slightly: a little more static, sounds from elsewhere in the room on Thor’s end sounding a bit louder.

“ _Loki. I would like to confirm that you haven’t harmed Mr. Stark in any way._ ”

“Only when he asked me to,” Loki countered brightly.

Tony sniggered when he heard a faint giggle from someone on the other end: someone a bit more feminine than Thor, but not as restrained as he’d heard before.

“Hello, Darcy,” Loki sighed, rolling his eyes.

“Who?” Tony muttered.

“An intern of Dr. Foster’s, apparently.”

“Ah,” Tony said. He then repeated it with a slightly different inflection as Loki began to stroke him in earnest. “Ssss you’re an evil god,” Tony hissed under his breath.

“ _What did you say, Stark?_ ”

“Your brother is evil,” he said, as casually as he could manage.

“ _Loki!_ ”

“No-no-no. I’m not complaining,” Tony said quickly, his voice only a little breathless. “He’s really very good at it.”

From the woman apparently named Darcy, they heard, “ _Ohmygod_.”

“Your intern, at least, is perceptive,” Loki said, and chuckled softly. It was a rich sound, and Tony could feel the vibration of it against his back.

“ _Loki, what trickery is this?_ ” Thor demanded.

“Brother, if I’m going to properly enjoy my time in Tony Stark’s bed any further, today, I really don’t want your voice involved in the proceedings. I’m going to hang up now.”

“ _What?!_ ”

“ _I was right!_ ”

“ _Stark!_ ”

“Thor, I’ve got to agree with Loki on this one. You’re really killing the mood.”

“Goodbye,” Loki said, his voice all sweetness.

“ _LOKI!_ ”

Tony tapped “end call” and dropped the phone next to his on the night stand before rolling over and pinning Loki down on the bed. “You’re a menace, you know.”

“You knew that when you gave me a calling card.”

Tony laughed and kissed him, not at all gentle.

 

~~

 

Within four days, Loki procured an excellent location for the lab, away from the city and carved out of the side of a mountain. What it had originally been used for, Tony wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He had a feeling the tesseract may have spent a bit of time there at one point or another. “I feel like I have an evil lair now.”

“You’re saying that you need more henchmen?”

“No, no. They get in the way of the lasers.”

Loki looked a little put out.

“Plus, they’re overrated. Any plot requiring a group of henchmen to go do something already has problems.”

“I don’t know, I thought I pulled off henchmen rather well. They did manage to get me out of the helicarrier quite efficiently.”

“They were more like your lieutenants of evil, rather than your pawns. Subtle difference.”

The undertaking was no small task, really. They needed generators in addition to their connection to the local power grid, and Tony had to significantly alter his original rig in order to support making amounts of the element a bit larger than the triangular core in his arc reactor. It took a week just to get all of the equipment set up, and a few more days without sleep in order to actually get it all running. Loki vanished for a couple of days, and returned with a few styrofoam containers of Indian food, a generator that someone had clearly tried to base on the arc reactor with minimal success, and a set of handcuffs dangling from one wrist.

Tony accepted the food with the vigor of a man who’d forgotten to eat for a day and a half, and eyed the large piece of machinery with interest as he ate. “Where did you find this? I mean, I can make it work with a bit of tweaking and we’ll be up an extra generator, but-”

“You have fans,” Loki said simply, taking off the pair of mirrored sunglasses he’d shown up wearing. One of his eyes looked a bit red and bloodshot. “Or, in this case, a stalker who seemed intent on getting enough information from you to create this and sell it to the highest bidder.” He gestured toward the generator.

“You bid?”

“I counter-stalked. She’s been arrested.”

“Is... that where the handcuffs came in?”

Loki glanced down as though he’d forgotten about them. “Well, I may have also gotten arrested in the process. Very briefly. A simple misunderstanding.”

Tony snorted. “You couldn’t magic them off?”

Loki did so to prove he could. “I thought perhaps they could be useful.” He shot the engineer a leer.

Tony’s eyes widened. “I see. Uhm.”

After they broke a bedpost two days later, it was decided that handcuffing Loki, while fun, required something heavy and metal to cuff him to. Wood bedposts just couldn’t handle it.

 

~~

 

Once the lab was up and running, with the aid of one or two AIs with a bit less tact and grace than JARVIS, processing began in earnest. Tony focused on keeping the process stable and efficient, and slowly perfecting devices around it so he could automate it. Doing it all by hand just wasn’t feasible.

Loki spent some time in the lab, just watching with an open, fascinated sort of expression, occasionally smiling a little for no apparent reason, just staring into the heat and the sparks as the product started to glow white-hot and blinding.

“You’re really telling me the gods don’t have a way to do this themselves?” Tony asked at one point.

Loki shook his head. “It exists in a naturally-occurring form, in a few distant worlds. It’s only needed in relatively small amounts for most purposes. I hardly think it occurred to any of them that they might shape it themselves, rather than finding it at an obscure market at the edge of the galaxy.”

“No wonder they bore you,” Tony said, and powered up his machines again, adjusting his goggles and adjusting a few valves. He didn’t quite see the surprised look of something akin to wonder on Loki’s face.

 

~~

 

Of course, S.H.I.E.L.D. found out quickly enough, as Tony knew they would. He was thus unsurprised entirely when he showed up at the processing site to find it surrounded by black cars and intimidating men and women in flat black suits. Fury, of course, was waiting for him at the door. Tony smirked a little. “Not able to get in, I see.”

“And we’re very interested to know how you managed that, Mr. Stark,” Fury called out, as the billionaire sauntered past the heavily armed agents of the outer perimeter. “You’ve been keeping the good stuff again, I take it?”

“Oh, this isn’t mine,” Tony corrected with a quick, flashy grin. “I’ll let you know if I find out how he does it, though. Studying him and running experiments on him is in our contract.”

“We did notice the name on the deed for this place,” the woman behind Fury’s right shoulder mentioned. “Luke Laufeyson. Interesting surname.”

“Is it?” Tony leaned against the door.

“I’d like to get a look at this contract of yours, Tony,” Fury said firmly.

“I suppose the exception can be made if I’m the one letting you in, given I was the one who put in the conditions to keep you out,” Tony sighed. “But they stay out. No promises as to what might happen to them otherwise: like I said, this isn’t entirely my place.” He placed a hand on the door handle and felt a tingling hum run up his arm. It intensified for a moment, then cut out. The door gave single electric chirp, and opened smoothly when he pulled. He motioned Fury and Miss Hill in, then gave everyone else a smile and a cheerful wave before closing the door behind them with a satisfying snap.

They found Loki in the lab, his back to them as he sorted through the crystallized pieces of Tony’s still-unnamed new element with a pair of long metal tongs.

“For the record,” Loki said smoothly, “ _You_ let them in.”

Fury and Hill both drew their guns immediately. “Stark, you’d better have a damn good excuse for this, because you don’t look possessed.”

“He isn’t. That would just be _awkward_ ,” Loki purred, turning on his heel to face them with one of his most winning smiles. “Director Fury, it’s so excellent to see you well.” He nodded at both of them. “And Agent Hill. It’s _just_ like old times.”

“I preferred it when you were in a box,” Hill muttered.

“Oh please.” Loki rolled his eyes. “I’m on parole: close enough.”

The two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents looked more than a little skeptical.

“Tony, given that any sudden moves on my part will likely get a bit messy, would you be so kind as to give my brother a call? As he’s the one of us rather incapable of telling a convincing lie, he might be considered a more reliable information source,” Loki said smoothly.

Tony snorted and started to flick through his phone’s address book, unconcerned by the glare Agent Hill shot at him. “How did you lock them out, by the way?”

“Magic,” Loki said simply.

“I want that one.”

Loki snorted. “If you think you can decipher it.”

Fury was increasingly annoyed by their banter. “Get the blond god on the phone.”

“Doing so––speak of the man, Hello, Thor,” he greeted cheerfully. “Oh, you know, just calling because we’ve got some people aiming guns at your brother. Yes. No. No, not this time. It’s Fury, you see. Yeah? Good. Nick, he’d like to talk to you.”

Agent Hill sidled her way closer. Fury didn’t look away or lower his gun in order to take the phone. Loki offered a benign-looking smile that might have looked harmless on anyone other than the god of lies.

“Start talking, Odinson,” Fury said quickly. He then listened for a full two minutes, making only vague, noncommittal sounds in response to Thor’s words. He then tilted his head up. “Bring out the contract.”

Loki gestured with one hand, the documents swirling into existence in the palm of his hand. He held them out. Fury nodded at Tony.

Tony rolled his eyes, stepped up to take the papers, and handed them to Fury.

Fury looked it over. “You’re currently bound by some restraint against killing people, I see.”

Loki rolled up one sleeve, showing off a complex, weaving design that appeared almost seared into his skin more so than tattooed. “They’ll know if I do.”

“They didn’t seem so capable of keeping you contained before.”

“I fell through an inter-dimensional rift in the fabric of the universe before I could be sentenced, that time around,” Loki said flatly. “Even if I’d just been fleeing the court by that point, they would’ve been hard pressed to follow me there.”

“No plans to do that again?”

Loki’s eyes narrowed. “No. Thanks.”

Fury nodded, and exchanged a few curt words with Thor, before ending the call and looking between Tony Stark and the god of mischief with frank suspicion. “We’ll be keeping our eyes on the both of you, you know.”

“I’m flattered.”

“If you’re all done flirting,” Tony interjected airily, “I would like my phone back, and my lab.” _And Loki_ , he didn’t add, though the fact it crossed his mind made him nervous.

“The moment the terms of this contract expire, Mr. Stark, you can expect us to drop by,” Fury said dryly. “And you stick to your goddamn parole or I’ll persuade Banner to crush your skull next time, Asgard be damned,” Fury threatened.

Loki only kept smiling, as infuriatingly as possible. “As you wish.”

 

~~

 

Loki stood in the middle of the experimentation corner, stripped to the waist, arms folded, watching Tony fiddle about with different scanners. “Ah, there we are. You can stop that, now.”

“Stop what?”

“You’re using some sort of-” Tony looked up, a small crease appearing between his brows. “I thought you’d put on an illusion a moment ago?”

Loki cleared his throat and looked away.

“You were already wearing one. What... what am I missing, here?”

With a sigh, the trickster let the illusion drop.

“Did you get hit by a car?”

“Do I look like my brother?”

“Where did you get these?” Tony stepped away from his machines and gently touched the livid bruising along Loki’s left side.

“It’s nothing. Yesterday it needed stitches, but give it a few more hours-”

“Loki.”

“What?”

“Sometimes I worry about you, you know,” Tony muttered. “People think _I_ get in trouble.”

“You _do_ , Tony.”

“Not half so much as you, I think.”

The trickster god thought about it, frowned a little, then shrugged. “Quite possibly.”

“You’re not going to tell me what happened, are you?”

For a moment, Loki looked distinctly unforthcoming, then ruined it with a small frown. He looked straight ahead into the middle distance. “They decided not to send Thor after the last items on the list. I may have had to pay a visit to a densely populated area in Jotunheim. It could’ve gone better, let us say.”

“I did wonder where you’d gone. You’re okay?”

“Yes. I will be fine.”

“You didn’t kill anyone?”

“I would have hardly been so injured if I had been allowed to do that,” Loki sighed. Something else in his expression remained closed off, though. Something that had cut to the bone.

“Did someone recognize you or something?”

Loki flinched as though stung. “How did-?” He cut off and exhaled slowly. “Yes and no.”

Tony’s eyebrows raised, but he pressed no further, and simply waited.

The god folded his arms across his chest and stared into space for a few moments, before a self-deprecating smirk, devoid of actual humor, twisted his lips. “Would you like to learn a bit more about frost giants?”

“I must admit, I’m curious,” Tony said softly.

Loki nodded and unfolded his arms. “Your scanners are running?”

“Yeah.”

Loki looked at him, then away again, clearing his throat. “You may want to step back.”

Tony took a half-step back, standing directly in front of the god of mischief, who shot him an odd look as a result, seemingly perplexed to note that he hadn’t moved farther or looked away.

Then Loki took a deep breath, and gestured with his hands, summoning a large blue box seemingly from nowhere. It glowed a slightly more ethereal, cooler blue than the tesseract, and seemed almost to breathe as Loki held it. Starting where it touched his hands, and creeping up his arms, it darkened his skin to a deep, surprisingly rich blue. Parallel markings stood out on Loki’s skin, looking almost, but not quite, like scars. When the god met his gaze, Tony startled a bit at the deep red of Loki’s eyes.

“Wow,” he said, and couldn’t immediately come up with much more. “Can I––can I come closer?”

Loki nodded, and Tony stepped in close enough to touch again, curious as to how he could almost feel waves of cold, as though Loki were radiating it. _Not possible: heat just doesn’t work that way––right?_

“Why did you need to whip out the box to show me this?”

“I’ve been raised rather warmer than most. It takes a significant amount of cold to bring this out,” Loki said simply. “I haven’t had much time to practice summoning it by sheer will. This casket is just the most expedient way to bring it out. Also, if you were wondering, it was once the last source of Jotunheim’s power and Odin took it from them, along with me, when the war ended.”

Tony nodded, his eyes still scanning Loki’s changed skin. “The markings...”

Loki snorted. “I was unaware, but apparently they reveal something of my heritage. Similar markings run in families, and I am not exactly tall for a frost giant.” His brow furrowed. He vanished the box and once more folded his arms over his chest. “Neither was Laufey. Apparently that was enough resemblance to arouse suspicion, given his closer kin were all thought to be dead.”

“Ah. That... sounds awkward.”

“Oh yes. And ultimately it turned violent, because I really am a son of Odin, I suppose,” the god mused. He twitched when he felt Tony’s fingers brush his arm. “Careful.”

“It wouldn’t make sense for all contact to do harm like that. It would only really be useful as something intentional.”

Loki swallowed tightly, not quite sure how to feel about the searing-hot points of warmth where Tony’s fingertips brushed his skin. The sensation hovered between pain, and quite the opposite. His eyes fell shut. “I––suppose so.”

“And you’re not focused on making the rest of your skin cold enough to bite mine,” Tony said softly, walking around Loki now, still touching with just the tips of his fingers, tracing the lines of muscle groups, or the markings that had apparently gotten the god of mischief into trouble. “You feel cold, but it doesn’t hurt.”

“Your fingers are––very warm,” Loki said, his voice not quite steady.

Tony felt a jolt of something like electricity at the sound of it: almost vulnerable. “You’re alright?”

“Yes.”

Tony stood in front of him again, very close. “Your turn.”

Loki’s eyes snapped open.

Tony reached up and tugged at his arms, unfolding them, taking hold of Loki’s hands and lifting them to his neck. Both of them shivered. “I need to keep you here for summer. That’s fantastic,” Tony murmured.

Loki was merely looking at him as though he were a lunatic. “You might actually be crazier than I am, some days.”

“Of course I am.” Tony smirked, running his fingers up Loki’s arms. “You look amazing like this, you know. Well, you generally always look good to an unfair degree, but this is a bit breathtaking.”

Loki shook his head. “Lunatic.”

“Super-villain.”

“Touche`,” the god mused, then stopped as Tony stepped up and kissed him, with calloused thumbs exploring the markings below his cheekbones. It burned, almost enough to sting, until Tony’s tongue slid into his mouth and the cold began to fade altogether, like this mortal was melting him. He hummed low, returned the kiss with the same slow, almost tender affection Tony had began it with.

Then he felt the curve of Tony’s smile against his lips. “Warmed up, have you?”

Loki blinked, glancing down at himself as surreptitiously as possible. “Apparently so.” He returned the smile. “You’re out of your mind, you know.”

“Your bruises are gone, too.”

Loki blinked at that. Very odd. Unexpected. “That’s strange.”

“Not complaining. Especially since I feel a sudden, pressing need to have you on that table over there.”

The god of mischief smirked again, feeling wholly himself. “I thought you’d never ask.”

 

~~

 

“Would you like a bit of apple?”

Tony jumped, and stared up at Loki. “Why are you on the ceiling?”

“My ankle is stuck.”

“Where?”

“Keep looking.”

Tony moved his head to one side, and caught sight of You’s arm. “Why is U reaching over three different bits of heavy machinery to hold you over my head?”

Loki sighed. “I may have lost a bet.”

“Uhm.”

“Well, lost one and won another. It was a fair trade.”

“What bet would lead to this?”

“Do you want some of this apple or not?”

Tony looked at it, and was hit with the smell of an orchard, and sunlight, and maybe some sort of heavenly choir. “Is the skin of it actually gold?”

“It’s perfectly edible.” To prove his point, Loki popped a small slice into his mouth and chewed. “Try it.”

Tony took a bite. He swallowed it, and felt a strange, warm tingle through his entire body. “Uh... Loki?”

“Yes?”

“Can I have another?”

The trickster smiled. “I thought you might like it.” He reached into his suit pocket, which realistically should have been empty due to his upside-down position, and pulled out a smaller, uncut apple. “Here. For you.”

Tony smiled at him. “Thank you.” Maybe it had been the three days without sleep, working like a madman while Loki had been off somewhere, but he really didn’t think much of it. The apple was delicious to an almost absurd degree, but given it was clearly not from planet Earth, and Tony hadn’t eaten anything else all day, he didn’t think much of that either.

 

~~

 

Production sped up considerably once Tony managed to get the process almost wholly automated, but it was still a lot of energy and resources going in, to create relatively little mass by the end. It took just over nine weeks to get about one-third of the amount Loki had specified, with minimal breaks between batches. Tony was enjoying his time on the project well enough, though.

“No, I don’t care how many times you keep saying ‘advanced science’: you’re still pulling that shit out of thin air.”

Loki’s laughter seemed to occur more frequently over the past few weeks. Tony was becoming far too fond of it. He tried not to think _I’m going to miss this_. He determinedly did not think about deadlines, or how long they had until production was completed. He determinedly did not think absurd things like, _I wonder if I make him happy_. Not at all.

He’d managed to construct armor that repelled magic, and energy fields that could disrupt even Loki’s better illusions. That in and of itself hadn’t been too hard. Trying to understand how Loki’s magic actually worked, on the other hand, was far more complicated.

“You could accept my summoning a glowing blue casket from a pocket dimension with a bit of hand-waving, but less solid projectiles from my own power reserves are crossing a line?” Loki mocked.

“Don’t get me started on the hand-waving,” Tony warned. “I’m still convinced that you all have nanomachines in your blood, or something.”

“Not ‘midichlorians’?”

“That was an awful plot device, and an awful movie, and I should never have introduced you to it.”

“It was mostly fun just to watch your discomfort as you watched the film”

“That’s because you get perverse enjoyment out of my pain.”

“Only a little.” Loki’s smile turned lascivious. “Well... when you make certain noises along with it, in any case, but that’s only a little pain intermixed with a lot more of something entirely else.”

“Er... I make particular noises? Pain-specific?”

“Usually when I’m working on fucking you straight through from one orgasm to a second,” Loki purred.

Tony licked his lips. “Maybe later we can investigate that a bit further. One more time with the-”

Loki sent a blast of emerald-green light at the target again, where it struck as though it were solid, engulfed the target as though it were flame and––with an additional gesture and murmured phrase from the god––crumbled it to dust. The god of mischief smiled with satisfaction, just a little.

“One more for the list,” he murmured, before he could stop himself.

“List?”

“You’re on it like four times. Five now.”

“What list?”

“List of things that turn me on that probably shouldn’t turn me on.”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “And I’m on this list multiple times?”

Tony nodded. “Well, initially you had your own entry, but being turned on by you in general seems not only sensible, but unavoidable for me at this point. Now you just have a few entries specific to things I’ve seen you do.”

“May I ask what these are?”

“Well.” Tony gestured. “There’s that.”

“And?”

“Kissing you when you’re all blued-out. I, uh, the cold actually feels kind of fantastic, at times.”

Loki was rendered a bit speechless.

Tony kept talking, because eventually he’d say something ridiculous enough Loki would laugh and snap them both out of it. “There was also the––when we were still––the time I came to see you while you were gagged, the way you-” He hesitated for a moment. “You were just sort of gorgeous, and still had other people’s blood on you, and if you hadn’t been cuffed and we hadn’t been in vault, you would’ve probably thrown me out a window, but the whole conversation hit me as arousing as soon as you mentioned that bit about different circumstances. I really wanted to get that gag off you, and not for any sort of good intentions. And that whole thing was a turn-on, a bit unsettlingly.”

He looked up. Loki was still staring, and not seeming to blink. Two more to go.

“Did you know that you sometimes get this look like you want to rip out someone’s heart and eat it in front of them slowly, savoring each bite?”

Numbly, Loki nodded. “It’s been mentioned.”

“Disconcertingly arousing. It’s on the list.” One more. Tony took a deep breath. “And the last one seems to already be in progress.”

Loki blinked. “Pardon?”

“You look like you’re not quite sure whether you’re offended, aroused, or just outright shocked. It’s not something I get to see often, on you, and knowing I’ve managed it makes me feel just a little less mortal on a good day.”

A strange half-smile tugged at Loki’s lips, like there was a joke there Tony was missing. He stepped closer, until there was just a bare inch of space between them. “I’m adding those to _my_ list.”

“You have a list?”

“It’s a rather different list.”

“Less about arousal.”

“Yes and no. It’s a list of ways in which you quite frankly amaze me.”

Tony blinked a few times. “I what?”

“You heard me. Don’t go fishing for compliments, now.”

“I did just shower you with a few.”

“Yes, and I thus plan to fuck you through the mattress as soon as we’re done collecting this data you requested.”

Tony considered. “I declare today’s data-collection postponed.”

“Oh good.”

 

~~

 

Tony was sparring with Steve when he first really noticed something a bit odd going on; odd even for an Avenger, which it to say it was a little more unexpected than: archers hiding in the ceiling, giant green rage monsters, and the Norse god of thunder wearing bunny slippers. Tony noticed it when he managed to fling Steve about twenty feet across the room––without the suit. He didn’t quite dent the wall, but he’d certainly caught the capsicle off his guard. Natasha and Clint stopped their own sparring session to stare at him.

“Stark, have you been taking Bruce’s vitamins or something?” Clint asked.

Natasha merely stared at him in stony silence, her eyes narrowed.

“Uh... not that I’m aware of?” He cleared his throat. “Steve, are you okay?”

“Fine, just a bit stunned.”

“Did you hit your head?”

“No but _you_ threw me. Without your suit. I’m working on recovering my pride.”

Tony ran a few tests in the lab that night: strength tests he normally used while in the suit. The results were a little disquieting, but did explain how he’d managed to fling Captain fucking America across a room. He resolved to be a little more careful about sparring, at least until he found out what had caused this, how, and why. He ran a couple of endurance tests, checking and double-checking his own vitals.

The endurance tests wound up being as abnormally impressive as the strength tests, leaving Tony hardly even sweating after running three miles with the treadmill on high. His temperature was running a bit high at 99.9º F, but he had no other fever-like symptoms. His vision tested fine, possibly even a bit better than before. Even his blood pressure seemed to have improved all of a sudden. The not knowing _why_ , though, threatened to drive Tony up the wall.

He’d run chemical analysis on most of the food in his fridge, verified nothing appeared abnormal or tampered with, and further tested samples from several of his most frequent coffee-sources, before it fully occurred to him to check out his various labs: first the one in Stark tower, then Malibu, and finally his and Loki’s little den of rare-element-production. He was running checks on levels of radiation about the place, as well as various tests on a few of the processing byproducts, when Loki appeared from thin air with a bone-rattlingly loud cracking sound that nearly scared the crap out of the engineer. His geiger counter clattered where it hit the floor. Tony exclaimed a few colorful phrases, nearly fell off his chair, and was about to say something catty, until the second he realized quite how much blood Loki was wearing, and how damaged the god’s armor was.

Loki stumbled, and caught himself on part of the particle accelerator, but still visibly swayed. He looked very gaunt, more than a little blue around the edges, though that seemed to be fast-fading. The air around him was hazy, to such an extent that Tony couldn’t tell if it was steam or smoke coming from Loki’s skin.

Off the chair in a second, Tony darted over. “What the hell happened to you?” He took hold of one of Loki’s arms after determining it didn’t look broken, and slid it across his shoulder, wrapping one arm around the god’s waist to steady him.

“Not Hel. Muspelheim,” Loki muttered, his voice a rasp. “A lot of the blood isn’t mine, I promise. It would’ve been so much easier if I could’ve just _killed_ them.”

“Armor _off_ ,” Tony said firmly.

“Can’t do it the easy way: not a lot of magic left. Teleporting between realms isn’t so easy as it looks sometimes,” the god slurred, starting to sway on his feet again. “At least, not between that, and everything else...”

“Okay. Over here, I’ve got a cot you can bleed on for a bit.”

Loki made a slight incoherent sound, but let himself be led, and all but collapsed onto the cot when Tony told him to sit. He grimaced at the sudden movement, and looked almost more grey than pale. His eyes didn’t open again until he felt vaguely aware of Tony removing the remains of his armor.

“Do you need anything?” Tony asked, absent-mindedly, as he started to wipe away some of the blood from Loki’s skin with a towel to try and see where the cuts were. The god’s usually cool skin, under Tony’s hands, seemed to have a few oddly feverish patches, while the rest felt very nearly icy. “You look like you went a few rounds with something large and clawed.”

“Accurate,” Loki said. “I just need rest.”

“Drink this.” Tony handed him a bottle of water. “You’ve lost more blood than it looks like you have, haven’t you?”

“I’m beginning to think you know me too well,” the god muttered, but drank the water anyway. It got rid of some of the blood-and-ash taste in his mouth. “I knew I should’ve nicked more apples.”

Tony shook his head, not quite able to make sense of that. “Lay down.”

“Still bleeding.”

“I don’t care.”

Loki snorted, but lay down obediently. He frowned a bit when he felt Tony finish undressing him. “Find anything interesting?”

“There’s a throwing knife in your left thigh.”

Loki sat up sharply and winced as a result. “There is?”

Tony pointed at it.

The god of chaos tisked and reached down, yanking it out quickly, not seeing Tony grimace at the sight.

“Isn’t there an important artery in that general region?”

“They missed it. Not my much, though.” He flopped back down.

Tony felt sudden empathy with Pepper, all those times she chewed him out over getting hurt. It was a bit different with Loki, since he could recover from just about anything, but it still––felt wrong. After a long moment, he sighed raggedly and slipped into the cot alongside the god of mischief.

“What are you doing?”

Tony tugged at him, arranging the god so Loki half-sprawled over him. “Just relax, alright? You need to rest, so rest.” He sighed against the god’s hair, which smelled of brimstone, coal, and strange minerals. “You’re safe here.”

Loki muttered something that might have started out as a protest, but ended in a sigh as he settled in, his forehead tucked against Tony’s neck and one arm draped about the engineer’s waist.

 

~~

 

The lab location Loki had found wound up having a bit of oddly normal home decor thrown in, mostly after the god had realized Tony’s tendency to work for days at a stretch, and then fall into a coma for a few hours, made it necessary to keep something akin to a kitchenette for food- and coffee-related purposes. The place had a refrigerator, a table, and a few chairs that served as the front lobby. Also a microwave, a coffee maker, a rolling cabinet, a dishwasher, and a sink: life’s essentials.

Thor was there when Tony went to make coffee the next morning, which was decidedly awkward, since he was still covered in smears of Loki’s blood. “Uh. I can explain,” he said quickly.

“My brother, is he well?”

Tony fidgeted. “Uhm. He may have mentioned, in the contract-”

“Hence why I am not in the lab,” Thor said impatiently. “Is my brother well?”

Tony started the coffee maker running first, and then turned to face the god of thunder. “He honestly sort of looked like he got hit by a train. And then another couple of trains. And then Bruce on a bad day. He’s sleeping it off, apparently.”

Thor sighed and sat back down in one of the chairs.

Waiting by the coffee machine, Tony just watched him. “He said something about Muspelheim?”

“Demons,” Thor said, as though that explained everything.

“Of course,” Tony snorted. “You gods are insane. All of you.”

“Loki more than most of us, but you seem fond enough of my brother.”

The corner of Tony’s mouth twitched. “I am, yeah.” He frowned a bit: that’d come out a bit softer than he’d intended. Chiding himself, trying futilely to ignore the warm feeling in his chest, and again trying not to think about deadlines, and whether or not he’d really have to worry about Loki deciding to play villain again when their contractual peace ran out.

Thor stared at him a bit more shrewdly, then. “There is something stranger than usual about you, Tony Stark.”

Recalling his recent round of strength tests, Tony half-smirked. “Yeah. I know. I’m working on it.”

Loki chose that moment to stroll in, wearing nothing but a pair of black pajama pants, which frequently broke Tony’s brain in a number of ways even on a good day. He appeared fresh from the shower, which the engineer narrowed his eyes at, given that the only showers in the facility were for lab safety around certain chemicals. The god of mischief’s skin was still heavily bruised, but the wounds had closed. “Tony. Brother.” He paused, seeing the coffee already in progress, and leaned against the counter. He had a half-eaten apple of a familiar gold color in hand, and took a bite out of it casually, staring his brother down.

Thor’s expression seemed caught between surprise, offense, and confusion. “Loki. Where did you get that?”

“This? Oh, I just picked it up on my way somewhere,” Loki said innocently, waving the apple about in a careless, arcing gesture.

Thor glanced at Tony, then looked back at his brother. “No wonder you managed to survive Jotunheim. Still, you should have taken me with you.”

“Yes, Thor, because if there’s one word that comes to mind when I look at you, it’s _covert_ ,” he scathed, dripping sarcasm. “It required subtlety.”

“The apple?” Tony inquired delicately.

“Ask me later,” Loki said, shooting his brother a warning look rather than so much as glancing at his lover.

Thor looked thoroughly bemused and disapproving.

 

~~

 

It was the next time Doctor Doom appeared that Tony really began to suspect something really and truly, momentously bizarre was at hand, though it took him a while to make the connection. At first though, he was too busy thinking _Oh fuck I’m gonna die I’m gonna die I’m gonna die_.

It was a valid concern. He was under a collapsed building at the time, and could feel a steel girder grind against his ribcage with each excruciating and too-shallow breath. He knew that he’d lost a lot of blood, and kept waiting for the world to fade away, but it stayed: stubborn and persistent and agonizing. He could hear the battle move away from his location, and the remains of his helmet still had a half-working comm in it. Natasha had reported the collapse and called for a rescue crew. Clint was only just now relaying the fact that Ironman was underneath it. Tony tried to speak, or make any sound at all, but felt his very bones resist the effort.

He passed out.

When he half-woke next, it was to the sensation of immense pain. After the initial searing ache, he was aware of a voice in his ear, murmuring reassurances as he drifted in and out of different levels of semi-consciousness, never quite snapping fully awake. “You’ll be fine, Tony, come on. Wake up for me.” _Hallucination_ , Tony thought. _Has to be. I’m hallucinating Loki before I die. I must’ve been in deeper shit than I thought with that one._ The thought brought with it yet another bit of discomfort to an already very long list of pains: a dull ache just behind his sternum, caught between relief and regret.

But the Loki-voice lingered near his ear, whispering a constant series of sounds that Tony could only half-decipher, in and out. “You have to come back for me, if this doesn’t work I don’t know what...” “Don’t you _dare._ Don’t dare die on me now.” “You have to, you’re worth so much more...” “Please. Please, Tony.”

After a long while, Tony felt the words coalesce into a single sound and snapped awake, gasping raggedly. He clutched at his ribs with a groan and stared around himself in disbelief. He wasn’t under the wreckage, which was impossible. He also wasn’t half-crushed about the lungs anymore, which was also impossible. His armor had been removed and set aside in a neat pile, which was at the very least improbable. There was someone sitting on the ground beside him, who rested a hand atop one of Tony’s own: cool against his feverish skin. Tony looked at the hand, the wrist, the arm, and followed them up toward Loki’s face. “What are you doing here?”

“My brother felt it necessary to alert me the moment he found out you were under a collapsed building,” he said quietly. His eyes were a little wide, despite his otherwise unreadable expression; although Tony could discern storm clouds lurking behind that mask of calm. He had apparently arrived in that impeccable modern suit, though his scarf was missing and his jacket lay folded by Tony’s armor. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and both his skin and his clean white shirt were smeared with an uncomfortable amount of red. “How do you feel?”

“Like I should be dead.”

Something a bit pained crossed Loki’s expression before he could restrain it. His hand on Tony’s tightened its grip just a little.

“I’m not dead, right?”

“No. You’re not.” Something in the softness of the words unnerved him.

“You were talking to me.” Not quite a question.

Loki nodded anyway.

“You healed me.” Not a question at all.

Loki hesitated, then slowly shook his head.

Tony stared at him. “Not––that’s not possible. There was a big fuck-off girder or something and I couldn’t even-” he looked over his shoulder, saw a very warped steel girder with some blood on it nearby, sticking out of a narrow, deep hole in the overall wreckage. He swallowed tightly. “Oh.”

“Yes. That was of great concern to me, when I found you under all that,” Loki said simply, looking as composed as inhumanly possible. “At first it looked as though you might have been impaled on it.” His voice grew a bit strained on the last few syllables, and a bit of that storm behind the mask bled through, tightening his expression.

Tony looked down at the pile made up of his mangled and bloody armor, and at the girder, and then at Loki. “You. This _is_ you.”

“Hmm?”

“You did something. It must’ve been a while ago, when could it’ve...”

Loki blinked, his mask smooth and firmly fixed once more.

“I hurled Steve into a wall a couple weeks ago. On accident. Without the suit.”

Loki’s eyebrows raised. “Impressive, admittedly.”

“And now I just survived the sort of thing I only see gods and Captain America bounce back from,” Tony said sharply.

The god fidgeted, eyes suddenly downcast.

Slowly, it hit him. “Oh. Fuck. Golden apples. Seriously?!”

Loki coughed under his breath. “Ah. Well. Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just-” Tony stopped, his eyes becoming very wide. “Wait. You weren’t supposed to have them. Fuck, that was so obvious. Thor was thrown off by it, and I didn’t even think to... How did I miss this?”

“It _is_ strongly recommended that they not be transported out of Asgard,” Loki explained quietly, ignoring any other questions, still looking anywhere but at Tony. “Very strongly.”

It slowly, slowly sunk in. Tony stared. And stared. It lasted about two full minutes: the silent staring. His mouth might have even been hanging open. He kept staring until Loki’s curiosity overcame his aloof façade and he glanced at Tony, then promptly failed to pull his eyes away again once he started trying to decipher everything in that incredibly open expression the engineer suddenly wore.

“You––you gave me the same almost-immortality you all have.”

Loki nodded.

“You actually _stole_ it f––for me.”

Loki swallowed, and nodded again, wearing an expression that on anyone else might’ve looked really and truly _anxious_.

In that moment, Tony felt a swell of something angry and affectionate and awe-inspiring: elation, a rush heat in his chest behind the arc reactor, and it all made his heart flutter in a frankly embarrassing fashion. He half-laughed, a low and slightly broken sound that savored of disbelief and something like surrender. “Loki...”

The god cleared his throat. “Yes?”

“I... I kinda love you too, you know.” It was true. It shouldn’t have been, because it was insane and ridiculous of him, but the god of mischief and lies had made him functionally _immortal_ , and Tony knew why. _No deadlines. No time limits._

Loki’s eyes widened further. “ _Say that again_.” He hesitated, blinking as though confused with his own reaction. Then he seemed to come to terms with it and added, more quietly, “Please.”

“You’re insufferable and I love you, you lunatic.”

Then he had a god draped over him, straddling him a bit, breathing unevenly, and kissing him in brief, maddening little doses while breathing him in between each of them. Tony grabbed the front of Loki’s shirt and pulled him down, trying to force him closer, and deepening the kiss considerably once he managed it, drawing small and desperate sounds from the both of them. The god had a hand tangled gently in Tony’s hair, but his other on the back of the engineer’s neck was significantly more forceful.

Which was, somewhat embarrassingly, how Natasha found them.

She cleared her throat loudly.

Loki merely glanced up, not even moving his mouth more than a hair’s breadth from his lover’s. Tony at least had the decency to look a bit sheepish when he finally turned his head to glance up at her. The god’s hands settled possessively on his shoulders.

Natasha glanced at the nearby wreckage, the girder with Tony’s blood on it, and then at Loki. “You found him, then.”

“Yes. I did.” Loki seemed utterly unfazed by an assassin asking this of him while he very nearly straddled Tony Stark’s hips.

“Hi Natasha.”

“Good to see you still breathing, Tony.” She didn’t take her eyes off Loki. “That’s a lot of your blood over there.”

Loki’s grip on Tony’s shoulders tightened only a little. “Yes. It is.”

“You realize Thor is going to try to hug you as soon as she gives the word that you found me here,” Tony mused, lightening the mood.

 The god frowned a little. “That does rather complicate matters.”

Natasha smirked at them, and immediately made the announcement over the comms: “I found Tony. He looks mostly okay, but we’ll need a small med unit just in case.”

Cap relayed that the fight was over on their end, and they would be looking for civilians who might be similarly trapped in the wreckage and rubble.

“Good. Buzz Fury if you find anyone.”

Loki sighed and rose to his feet, offering Tony a hand, which he accepted. He could still feel all the bruises, and a couple of possibly-cracked ribs, but he was alive. And apparently in love with a god. And surprisingly the god sort of loved him, as well. He tugged at Loki’s collar and kissed the taller man’s neck, because he could, and because it distracted Loki long enough to prevent him teleporting away as soon as his brother came into view.

Thor did try a couple of times to embrace his brother, who teleported out of the way and called him number of exceedingly rude things. While they bickered, Natasha sidled over to Tony and said, “Did he actually heal you, or is this another power to chalk up alongside your recent increase in physical strength?”

Tony hesitated. “Yes and no.”

“To which?”

“I’m still working that out. I have him to thank either way though.”

Natasha nodded.

 

~~

 

S.H.I.E.L.D.’s records on the god of mischief declared him to be reformed, which was bullshit, really, in Tony’s opinion. Loki wasn’t reformed. He had just advanced and refined his art-form. What sort of trickster would he be, after all, if he couldn’t persuade people to trust him? He hadn’t quite gotten the hang of remorse, in regards to some of his past actions, but others, it was clear enough to Tony at least, didn’t sit easily with him in quiet moments.

There was still a sort of evil in him––or, rather a ruthless, callous facet to him that made him capable of evil things, which Tony understood better than most––and he still carried a fair amount of madness. The only real difference, which might be mistaken for reform, was that he’d decided that his future would be far more interesting with Earth still in it, rather than without.

Loki might never fully recover from all he’d seen when he fell, or the betrayals he’d felt, but he would be far less interesting and less sharp without those jagged edges. Tony chuckled when anyone suggested Thor’s brother might be a “good guy” of a sort; but then, Tony laughed when people called he himself that, too. Iron Man still sometimes snorted derisively when people called him a hero, so long as he wasn’t in front of the press.

Jagged edges were something Tony had some of himself. They just happened to fit into Loki’s like two pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, if each piece happened to consist of something as complicated as a three-dimensional fractal.

“They think you’ve reformed,” he said, when Loki walked into the lab. He smirked at the shocked, utterly sincere burst of laughter that earned from the Norse god.

 

~~

 

“What would you be god of, then?”

“Iron?”

“Taken, I think. Possibly. Most likely.”

“Snappy comebacks? Excellent taste? Hot rods?”

Loki’s lips brushed his just light enough it didn’t qualify as a kiss yet, and tenderly enough to distract the engineer thoroughly. “Cunning and Inspiration should do nicely.”

“Oh, you find me inspiring?”

“Infinitely,” the mischief-maker whispered, low and warm.

 

~~

 

When they had at last managed to pile up 2.4 metric tons of glowing white-blue matter, nearly a month after the collapsed building incident, Tony was half sure he was about to wake up from a long, strange dream, and he wasn’t looking forward to the hangover from it. Loki did something vaguely impossible with the material, apparently fitting it all in a large wooden chest, and handed the results to Thor.

Tony watched Thor prepare to use the tesseract again, for its astonishing powers of lift or whatever, when he felt Loki sidle up to him. “I don’t suppose you might be interested in a trip to Asgard?”

The engineer blinked a few times. “Isn’t there a rule or several against that?”

“For mortals.” Loki shot him a look that promised a great deal of havoc to be wrought. “You don’t quite qualify for that, these days.

“Think they’ll accept that?”

“I’m told that I can be very persuasive.”

“Brother!”

Loki waved him off. “You hardly need to add me on to the burden, with how much you’re already carrying. I’ll be along, in my ways.”

“Father will-”

“The All-Father can wait an hour or so. You can’t think that I plan to run off now, of all times. You _know_ I want him to remove these accursed restrictions on my ability to defend myself.” Loki tapped his forearm where the interwoven tracking and monitoring spells had been embedded.

Thor shook his head, but raised the tesseract and vanished regardless.

“I might have procured some suitable clothing for you,” Loki said.

Tony leaned closer. “That alone is terrifying. You all wear mostly metal and leather, don’t you?”

“You fly around in a metal suit of armor pretty frequently.”

“That’s completely different. I don’t socialize in it... much. Lately. Outside of Avengers work.”

“Come on, then. I’ll let you _choose_ your leathers, even.”

“You really want to take me to Asgard?”

Loki spun around and pulled Tony close. “Let’s see: I am about to be free of my terms of legal redemption, most of the people in Asgard proper actually despise me, and you and I are masterful at causing scandals. Why would I even hesitate?”

“Why bother putting me in Asgardian garb first?”

“Because it might suit you.” His expression turned lascivious and a little hungry.

Tony laughed, only a little breathlessly. “You’re insane. You are out of your fucking mind, and crazy, and––and-”

“You like it.”

“I do.” Tony’s grin widened, turning sharp as he tugged at the gold collar of Loki’s Asgardian casual-wear. “I really, really do.”

“You love it, even,” Loki said, softer.

“And you love me,” Tony purred, taking a deep breath. “Alright, god of mischief. Show me your Asgard. I’ll only steal a bit of the tech, I promise.”

Loki laughed, swaying a bit closer as though he were a little dizzy, or drunk. His grin was utterly brilliant and utterly breathtaking; it was the sort of smile he only flashed before something truly catastrophic occurred, but some catastrophes really were beautiful, when orchestrated by a master craftsman of chaos.

Tony felt the cool frisson as his adrenaline kicked in early, making him smile almost as crazily in return. “ _Oh_ , you have _plans_.”

“Yes.” A half-beat pause. “Rather, I have some ideas. I’ll run them by you while we get you into something admittedly less comfortable.” He ran his thumb along Tony’s ribcage, enjoying the soft, thin fabric of the T-shirt clothing it.

“So I’m a mischief consultant now?”

“If you believe yourself capable of keeping up.”

Tony’s smile turned sly and sharp, matching challenge with challenge. “Try me.”

**Author's Note:**

> This idea fell into my head fully-formed when I woke up late one Saturday morning. I didn't stop writing until 4am that Sunday. Before that, I was determined not to write for this fandom. Whelp. So much for that.


End file.
